The Doctor and the Case of the Prime Machine
by prof.edtt
Summary: A companion-less Eleventh Doctor finds himself in 19th-century London, aiding the great Sherlock Holmes and his stalwart sidekick, Dr. Watson. These fictional characters from literature can't be real, can they?
1. 1 Baker Street and Turmoil

1. Baker Street and Turmoil

In the multitude of years I have been chronicling the adventures of my friend, Sherlock Holmes, I have taken great pains to present a fair and balanced portrayal of the events surrounding the cases he has sought out or found himself a part of. Many of these adventures I relate from personal experience, though a few I translate to written word from the singular description of Holmes himself.

Often throughout my life, and growing less so now that I reach a doddering old age of forgetfulness, I suddenly remember a case we had shared involvement in that I had forgotten for a great many years only to have every detail flood back with a connecting familiar scent, or locale. Such sudden remembrances have fueled my writing for years after I felt I had written all there was to be written about my friend.

Now though, unlike the smiles that accompany the fond memories of our adventures, my mood is dark as an unlit alley and my face is a portrait of fear and distaste for the past suddenly dredged up from a foul, murky lake bottom where I had hoped it would stay for eternity.

I cannot recall at what point I tied rocks to this memory and cast it away in disgust and loathing, nor how long ago the incident truly occurred. Only just now did the first shimmering glimpses of the case suddenly spring back into my mind's eye, and I feel it necessary to relate them as they come, in fear that they may be lost forever as I, in my old age, grow ever nearer the long kiss of eternal sleep. Holmes has been lost to us for several years now, and it is for him and his memory that I trek back through this darkest adventure … towards whatever terrors may come.

My wife had only just passed on and the time was shortly after I gave in to Holmes' demands and moved back in to share with him the dwelling on Baker Street. I found myself in a haze of depression that was unrelenting and my practice had begun to suffer until, through intervention by Holmes himself, I sold it. Holmes was my only friend during that time, save my personal psychiatrist who I saw on a regular basis to alleviate some of the fear, guilt, and loss I felt daily. On this particular day, being the first day that I can remember of the affair, I entered the door to our shared rooms and found him sprawled out lazily across an old ratty chair and footstool with his fingers steepled, and his eyes shut while he drew heavily on his pipe.

It was mid-morning and though the shades were drawn, the fire had on a good blaze and lit the room in bursts of orange and yellow. For a moment, it appeared that the room was in a terrible state of disarray – more so than usual – but I soon put to right the true situation of the room. In the middle, lying tipped over and somewhat smashed, was a brand new reclining chair. A moment's thought brought the chair's origin to mind. It had been a gift to Holmes after he had solved a difficult case of forged identities and false claims to birthrights in a small hamlet in Northern Scotland. The man who had hired Holmes had been a keen engineer, as most Scotsmen tend to be it seems, and had built the chair with an automatic lever system that both reclined the back of the chair and extended the equivalent of a small foot stool from the chair's front. It really was quite ingenious; however, Holmes, being eccentric as he is about his furniture and his space in general, had obviously given the recliner a try, found it lacking it whatever traits he felt necessary for a recliner to have, and promptly tipped it over and begin destroying it for firewood. I deduced this more by obvious association of a wooden leg in the fire matching one still attached to the chair than by anything bearing resemblance to Holmes genius of deduction and observation.

As I sat putting together the state of the room, my friend had obviously allowed one eye to open and in a few seconds gathered enough facts to detail my entire week so far.

"You've been drinking at the public house again, Watson," he spoke to me with eyes closed again. "And not only that, you've tried to hide it from me."

"Holmes," I began but could not continue as he interjected.

"You spent last night sleeping outside Jeffrey Tobin's out of shame, and decided at some point very early this morning to come to Baker Street through the alleys, hoping to avoid the notice of the Baker Street Irregulars."

I stood stunned.

"You should really get that hand looked at by a doctor other than yourself," he continued. "It _was_ the Rottweiler, was it not?"

I pulled my left hand from behind my back and stared silently at the bandages Holmes had no way of having been able to see.

My friend's eyes were then upon me, but the lids were still heavy over them in that way they often were when Holmes was still going over the scene presented in his head. I sat down heavily in the remaining unbroken chair in the room and heaved a sigh of surrender.

"How did you know?" I asked.

"You really are quite off the game, Watson. Years ago you'd have been keen as a dog on hares to my methods in this singular case." He rose suddenly and glided over to where I sat, looking down his stately nose at me.

"You only drink ale at the public house, but you drink in excess. And there you also smoke the poor tobacco offered you by Henry Juddholm. You've attempted to hide this by dipping your fingers in brandy and running them down your lapels to hide the stale smell of ale. This I noticed as the firelight gave away the streaks with a subtle shine and discoloration from the normal color of your coat. You have also gone out of your way to tip ashes from an expensive cigar onto your lap and midriff, but you failed to address the most telling part of your wardrobe. The bottom of your pants show stains where you've leaned too close to one of the public house's leaking kegs, and additionally the ash from one of Juddholm's atrocious cigarettes still lies lodged in a lace hole of your left shoe."

I put my head in my hands, guiltily awaiting the rest of his sentence.

"There is a white mixture of dirt and mortar on the heel of your left shoe, a mortar made by only one who specializes in the restoration of historic districts who uses that particular blend to more closely resemble the aged mortar used in older surrounding buildings. The only such restoration project I know of between here and your usual haunts connects directly to our back alley through the series of dark corridors interwoven throughout the neighborhood."

He began to pace, pausing intermittently to pick up various sheets of paper and artifacts only to gaze at the momentarily and then return them to their place.

"You often stand with one hand behind your back when hiding something, whether gun or warrant; but never your left hand. I therefore surmised that the object meant to be hidden had something to do with the hand being hidden itself. Having deduced your course through the alleys to us this morning and your likely time of intersection with the Uxbridge's garden, I surmised that either one of the two Uxbridge dogs gave you a nasty bite as you squeezed through the narrow passage between the garden and the Smith house. Seeing as how the terrier sees you on a regular basis at the Drovers with his master, it could only have been the Rottweiler."

"And Tobin's place?" I queried painfully, but still in awe of his intellectual prowess.

"You have the distinct impression of burlap on the left side of your face. Which means since today is Wednesday, Jeffrey, as usual, had his rags out for collection in his usual burlap sack and set upon the very bench you used as a bed."

"I can't hide anything from you, Holmes," I lamented.

"On the contrary, Watson," he spoke in retort, "I am at a loss as to why, being so inebriated as you must have been last night, you have come at this hour to my doorstep."

I sat bolt upright with a start. I had forgotten the reason I had come until just that moment. Quickly, I pulled out the morning's paper from my coat and handed it to Holmes opened to the front page where a spectacular story was taking up most of the space.

Holmes' eyes darted back and forth over the words I had read in shock earlier that morning. In the earliest hours after previous nightfall, while investigating a disturbance near one of London's handful of opium dens, an Inspector Bridges, who was well known to both Holmes and I, had been brutally murdered and dismembered in a manner so foul that the entire area had to be evacuated not only to keep innocent eyes from seeing such a horrible sight, but to keep the bodily evidence intact over the fifty or so yards it was spread. Scotland Yard was bustling like an anthill that had been kicked by a wrathful child.

Holmes, much to my disappointment, merely scoffed and handed the paper back to me.

"Have you ever heard of such a thing?" I expelled. "What dastardly manner of criminal would have the nerve to do such a thing? There must have been a dozen people loitering around that area. Serial killers there have been who were less brazen than that."

"A simple murder. An obvious location. No case of interest to me, though my heart goes out to his family. Scotland Yard has lost a good man," Holmes said, sitting back down in his chair.

I stood slightly shocked at his bland reaction to the crime; but his manners, as I have said were eccentric. Many times he would pass up case after case of murder, espionage, rape, ransom, royal theft, and worse for a simple case of fraud.

"I realize, Watson, that you hope that I shall get involved in so spectacular a case," he said as he stared into the fire. "Scotland Yard, however, is not at my door asking for my assistance. And as the case, so far, is singularly uninteresting save the method of murder, I was hoping you would assist me on another matter in the Yorkshire Dales."

My eyes lightened at this news, "A better case then?"

"A simple case of fraud," he said with a slight smirk. "We shall set off this afternoon, if you are willing."

"I need a respite," I responded. "I shall return refreshed at noon."

Holmes absently waved his approval and I showed myself out. It was truly a highlight to the darkness I had found myself drowning in of late, but I had no idea the depths of darkness I was about to stumble into.


	2. 2 The Vanishing Man

2. The Vanishing Man

I returned, shortly after a quick meal and a wash, packed and ready to go. The journey to York would take several hours and I had packed the necessary comforts for a long trip. It had been decades since I had ventured into Yorkshire, and I looked forward to taking in some of the greatest countryside views England has to offer.

As to the details of the case Holmes was so keen on advising, he kept silent – only once raising a finger in the middle of the question as it was exiting my mouth. We took a silent ride by hansom over to King's Cross and were able to make entry directly to our train. It would be a long journey to York where we would then take a hackney coach into the rural areas. The locomotive jerked forward and we began our journey with Holmes staring out at the people still on the platform, taking in every detail of every person. After a good distance of travel had passed, which I had spent perusing the _Times_ and reading a yellow-backed novel, Holmes supplied me with the details of the investigation we were about to begin.

"Farmers of the Dales are proud folk as you know," he began. "Their livelihood fully depends, season to season, on the health of their stock. You will not find it as romanticized as the American way of ranching and farming – some families manage only a few assorted livestock, a milking cow, a few goats, perhaps a handful of pigs or sheep. There are, however, a few big-minded men that specialize in certain animals and it is a group of those men which this case revolves around."

He paused to drag in a few deep inhalations from his pipe before continuing.

"Cows, Watson," he remarked.

"Hmm?" I replied.

"What do you know about cows?" he expanded, still staring out his window.

"Very little, other than the obvious," I admitted. "My family had pigs, and even then our farm was separate from our family home and was run by cousins of my mother. I can only remember one or two times that I was ever there."

"Would you think that you have the observational capacity to be able to tell two cows apart if they were shown to you, taken into a closed barn, and then brought back out again?"

"I should think so," I replied. "I am sure I could determine one or two details for each cow that would keep them separate in my mind."

"Even if their markings had been manipulated? I would bring your focus back to our case of the missing horse some time ago, when even the horse's owner could not tell the white diamond on his prized racehorse had been painted over to conceal its identity."

"I do remember that," I said. "Is this new case one of disguised identity as well?"

"Perhaps," Holmes said, pulling breath through his pipe. "Here are the facts I have gleaned from the case so far.

"A Mr. Thomas Baker, a farmer and long time resident of these parts, lives in one quadrant of a rather expansive set of land. He shares boundaries thusly with two other farmers and sits diagonal to another farm. All four farms are owned primarily by cattle farmers, with the exception of Baker, who is also a horse enthusiast.

"Mr. Baker sent word to me by telegram of the case, having procured my details through my brother Mycroft, who often will spend brief holidays in the area when he is not being completely lazy and anti-social. The telegram arrived yesterday and stated the following:

"Mr. Sherlock Holmes – On advice from your brother, one Mycroft Holmes, I have been made aware of your special skills in cases of mystery. I hope you will find the good graces to lend your skill towards one such case involving some of my stock. Yesterday morning, I took notice of two young heifers within my herd that were not mine, after which I set to counting the lot and found I was none short. Again this morning, the same has happened. I am not missing any stock by head, but two more cows I've noticed that aren't mine. I would appreciate any help you can offer. I am willing to put you up if you should come, and will repay you what I can for your services. – Sincerely yours, Thomas Baker."

"An odd set of circumstances, I should say," I remarked. "Are any of the other farmers missing cattle?"

"Excellent question, Watson," he exclaimed. "I have further information which may shed more light on your direction of inquiry. Shortly after receiving that telegram I received another from a Mr. Paul Davison of similar content. Though where it seems Mr. Baker is a man of some education, Mr. Davison seems more likely a simple farmer. Here is the text of the telegram:

"Dear Mr. Holmes – Acquaintance of mine gave me your name. Come quick. Foulness afoot. Will heavy your coffers. – Paul Davison"

"Not a very detailed explanation, is it?" I said.

"Not as such. However, I did manage to track down Mycroft and gain the additional information I have already spoken of, namely the layout of the farms and the general specializations of the farmers. Additionally, I can provide you with two other details that may change whatever theory you have begun to formulate about the case.

"Firstly, four stone walls mark the boundaries of the farms, and though each farm holds many internal walls sectioning the farms into smaller enclosed pastures with gates, nowhere along the shared walls are there gates allowing access between farms. All four farms are bordered at their outer extremities by dirt roads which form the quadrangle boundary of the four farms which are also walled with stone.

"Secondly, I have procured in advance the names and dispositions of the other two farmers. One, a Mr. James Prentice, is the oldest and holds the largest herd. It is his ancestors which originally held the entirety of land before his grandfather divided and sold three parts of it. The last piece of the puzzle is a Mr. O'Grady, an emigrant from Ireland. He is the newest to take claim here and holds the smallest herd. And listen to this Watson," he said with a smirk. "Mr. O'Grady was run out of his former farm after his herd infected three others with a deadly disease causing their owners to lose their entire livelihood. It is believed by his former neighbors that the infection was not an accident, and in fact was only discovered after one farmer noted one of Mr. O'Grady's herd mixed in with his own. That singular cow was the catalyst in the outbreak of infection."

"Smacks of similar circumstances," I surmised.

"Exactly, Watson," Holmes replied. "We shall visit Mr. O'Grady first."

Just as Holmes spoke those words we were thrown violently in our seats as the brakes were engaged. For several seconds we were jostled in our cabin and it took a moment or two to sort out our luggage in its now chaotic state. From the surrounding area and my recollection of stations and towns we had passed so far, I could tell we were just outside of Mansfield, having just recently passed Nottingham. There was a good seventy miles left to our journey, but it seemed with the amount of activity beginning to erupt all around the train that we might be delayed.

A porter tapped at our door before entering and inquiring as to our state.

"We are quite uninjured," said Holmes. "I wonder if you could tell us why the engineer applied the brakes."

The porter, who looked sharper than most of the lower class citizens who worked on the trains at that time, was of Indian descent. At Holmes specific question, he smirked and answered, "How did you know it was the engineer and not a passenger who stopped the train?"

"Elementary," said Holmes, quite pleased with himself. "An alarm would have sounded a few seconds before the brakes were applied. In this case, the sudden application of the brakes could only mean that the engineer was forced to do so without notice and was unable to engage the warning alarm."

"I've heard only that something was on the track and we were forced to stop to avoid hitting it. I don't know whether we hit it or not," replied the porter.

"A half of a sovereign for you if you can provide me with specific details," Holmes offered.

The porter smiled and nodded before leaving us to ourselves.

"Should we not exit the train to offer our assistance?" I queried.

Holmes smiled and shook his head. "Let us determine the facts of the situation before we exert ourselves from the cabin. It may be something as simple as a fallen tree. Patience is warranted for the moment."

Several rail attendants from the rearward cars walked by our window towards the engine, followed by a handful of curious passengers. After a few moments, a rough-looking man with a square-cut jaw was escorted back to the rear by two rail officials. His face was pale and he was stammering to his escorts and making wild gestures.

"Interesting," remarked Holmes. "That was the lead engineer. It appears we may wish to investigate our sudden termination of movement a bit closer."

Just then, the porter returned.

"There's nothing there," he told us, his face a picture of confusion. "The engine man swears he saw a man on the track and he hit the brakes, but then says the man vanished into thin air."

"Most interesting," Holmes said, a twinkle in his eye appearing that I knew all too well. He pressed a sovereign into the porter's hand and rose to leave. "It appears we may be delayed, Watson. Let us have a conversation with this train's masters to discern the facts."

We exited the train amidst a gathering crowd of passengers who apparently had also seen the engineer being escorted to the rear. Holmes quickly singled out an attendant who then led us to the front engine.

The attendant, who was a tall man in his late thirties, knew Holmes by reputation and was extremely helpful to us.

"It's a queer thing," he told us, "The engineer is named Mitchell, and he's worked trains for twenty years. I've never known him to panic like he did. The firemen say he screamed with fright before he threw the lever, but none of them had seen anything in the train's path."

We had reached the front of the train, and as was imparted to us, there was nothing there.

"Did you inspect the underside of the train for a body, or perhaps some debris that the man may have mistaken for a person?" asked Holmes, carefully noting as many details about the train's position as he could.

"We did, sir," replied the attendant. "Nothing was found."

Holmes began to walk along the side of the train, backwards from the engine, paying close attention to the ground and the ties between the rails. Just past the fuel car, he suddenly dropped to his knees and bent down to the rails, removing a magnifying glass from his coat.

"Halloa! What have we here?" he piped.

The attendant and I joined him, but kept our distance so as not to interfere with his investigation.

"See this soft earth between the ties here, Watson?" he remarked as he ran his eyes over the area. "What do you notice?"

I bent over and tried to determine what detail he was referring to. There was a strange pattern in the dirt, vaguely in the shape of a footprint, but the pattern was one I had never seen on any type of shoe or boot before.

"A shoe print, it seems," I said to him.

"And an unusual one at that," he replied. "Rubber soled if I'm not mistaken, and with a tread pattern quite unlike anything you would find in England … or any other locale I would imagine. Most curious."

The attendant and I looked at each other, both as confounded as the other as to the meaning of this discovery.

As Holmes continued his search of the area he said to us, "It is entirely probable, given your description of the faculties and history of the engineer who claimed to have seen a person on the tracks, and coupled with this evidence of a print only freshly made, that there indeed was someone on the tracks."

"It is possible that while moving to engage the brakes, the engineer failed to see the person move from the path of the train," I theorized aloud. "And perhaps the other engineers were too busy to have witnessed anything before the brakes were engaged."

"Excellent, Watson," he said, still bent over the rails. "You really do please me with your deductions. However, there are no tracks leading away from this point."

I hung my head a bit dejectedly, but was at least pleased by his compliment to some small degree.

"What's this?" Holmes suddenly exclaimed. "Watson, fetch one of your empty vials!"

I quickly hurried back to our cabin and retrieved a vial from my traveling medical kit. By the time I returned to Holmes, a gathering of people had formed in a semi-circle around him. Without a word he took the vial from me and using a penknife he scooped a small amount of powdery residue from one of the ties.

"You are sure there is no body to be found caught beneath the cars or off to the sides?" he asked one of the attendants who was crouched next to him.

"We found nothing, Mr. Holmes. No blood, no cloth, no footwear – nothing," the attendant replied.

Holmes stood then and returned his eyeglass to a pocket. Turning round to face me, he pressed the vial into the palm of my hand with force, saying somewhat harshly in a whisper, "Watson, do not, for fear of death, lose this vial. It is of the utmost importance that as soon as we are able we find a laboratory to determine the exact components of this residue."

His tone surprised me and I quickly slipped the vial carefully into an inside pocket.

The sound of hoofs broke the sudden intense silence following his command. From around the engine came a messenger riding horseback shouting, "Urgent telegram for Sherlock Holmes!"

"This is most unusual," said Holmes, his brow furrowing in puzzlement. He raised his hand to the messenger who reined in his mount and leaped to the ground.

"Mr. Sherlock Holmes?" the messenger queried.

"That is correct," Holmes replied.

"Telegram from Scotland Yard," the messenger said, handing the envelope to my friend. "From an Inspector Lestrade."

Holmes opened the envelope and ran his eyes over its contents in silence. He paused a moment and looked to the messenger and then to his horse.

"How far is the nearest telegraph station?" he asked the man.

"Only two miles west, sir," came the reply.

Holmes nodded and procured a pencil with which he jotted down a few words. Folding the telegram, he handed it back to the messenger and flipped him a coin.

"Send that in reply," he commanded. With a nod the messenger mounted his horse and galloped away.

Silence reigned for a moment as Holmes' eyes grew distant with thought.

"What did the telegram say, Holmes?" I asked.

"There has been another murder. Scotland Yard is requesting our assistance."

"Another officer?"

"Indeed. And the manner of murder is quite similar to the ghastly business of the former. But it is most disturbing, this business," he said, putting a finger to his lips in thought.

"I should say so," I said, "It looks as if it may be the work of a serial killer. Should we turn back?"

Holmes shook his head. "It's not the murder that disturbs me, Watson. It is the manner in which we have received this communication. Lestrade did not know our whereabouts, and Mycroft would not have told him."

"He has someone following us then?" I deduced.

"No, Watson. This communication did not come from Lestrade. In the many years we have worked with him we have received many telegrams coming directly by his instruction. He always signs Lestrade, or Inspector Lestrade, but never Inspector G. Lestrade."

"What can it mean?" I asked, completely lost.

"It means that someone does not wish us to reach Yorkshire."


	3. 3 A Web of Deceit

3. A Web of Deceit

My friend began to exhibit the usual symptoms of keen interest in strange circumstances. His gait became noticeably different, stalking more than leisurely strolling. His eyes were afire with life, taking in every detail of every nook and cranny. His fingers twitched in purposeful patterns as if he were calculating important figures in his head.

The attendant who had been helpful to us so far escorted us back to the rear-most car where the lead engineer had been taken. A railway official had Mitchell seated in a folding chair at the end of the car on the ties, thus hiding him from any curious passengers. The lead engineer was given a glass of water and though his color was returning, he was still very agitated.

"I tell ye I saw a man standin' there plain as day and then he just disappeared," the man explained, presumably repeating the same story he had been conveying to his inquisitors.

"What was this man wearing?" asked Holmes as we walked up to the scene.

The official turned to face us, seeming rather upset at the interruption of his investigation.

"This is official business, sir," he barked. "You should return to your cabin at once. We'll be underway shortly."

Our helpful friend stepped forward at this point and said, "This is Mr. Sherlock Holmes, sir, and his assistant, Dr. Watson."

Whispers broke out among the other attendants, porters, and railmen at the scene. The official obviously recognized the name. His jaw jutted forward and his bottom lip pursed outward in annoyance.

"A freelance meddler, nothing more," he said gruffly. "You show me some paperwork of authority from Scotland Yard and I will gladly turn over the investigation to you. Otherwise, you had best turn back towards the passenger cabins and wait until we are underway or I shall have you escorted back."

Holmes stood his ground and removed a parcel of paper from his pocket with the official seal of Scotland Yard imprinted upon it. I glanced and saw that it had been signed by Inspector Lestrade. Holmes handed the document to the official whose eyes widened.

The official perused the text and quietly handed Holmes the document back.

"If you would be so kind as to give us some privacy, gentleman," Holmes said to the crowd, "this is official business."

The assorted rail workers turned and left the scene, but the official hesitated a moment, his face turning a thousand shades of red, before he stomped off in defeat.

"Where did you get that?" I asked my friend after we were alone with the engineer and our good attendant.

Holmes smirked and said, "Oh I keep several on hand for emergencies – some from the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Agriculture, all clever forgeries. Lestrade's signature is one of the easiest to mimic as it resembles the scrawling of a five-year-old."

Even Mitchell chuckled at this, and I doubled over with laughter, "You old rogue. You would find yourself in a great deal of trouble if someone were to find out."

"Indeed, Watson. That is why I only use them in the most desperate situations." He then turned to our engineer and gave him a gentle smile before proceeding to question him about the events.

The engineer was happy to answer our questions, no matter what direction they took. Mitchell had been riding the rails since he was sixteen, and had a keen interest in locomotives all his life. He had never touched a drop of alcohol his entire life and had no vices to speak of. He was unmarried and traveled extensively as his position allowed.

Holmes returned to his initial line of questioning in regards to the clothes the vanishing man had been wearing.

"He had a long dirty coat," Mitchell replied. "His pants were thick material, leather maybe, and his boots had heavy thick soles."

"Rubber soles?"

"Aye, they had to have been as they were thickly treaded like mountaineering boots. And the feller wore goggles that he had set up on his forehead, holding down the brightest yellow hair you ever seen."

"You mean blonde?" interrupted Holmes.

"Nay, when I say yellow I mean yellow as a canary. That's all I can tell ye. I didn't have long to look afore I had to pull the brakes."

"Now, in regards to that precise moment and the moments following, were you the only man in position to be looking out the forward glass?" questioned Holmes.

"Aye, I was. The others had tasks to attend to that wouldn't allow a view of the rails in front. No matter what they say, I'm the only that could have seen him."

"So you engaged the brakes. Did you look away to do so?"

"I did not. I know my engine blinded. I set my hands on the lever and never once did my eyes leave that face. I thought for sure that he was a goner."

"And the man vanished, you say. Did he make any gesture before you saw him disappear?" continued Holmes.

"Yeah, he did, in fact. He brought his hand up to his chest just before he went 'poof'"

"Thank you, Mr. Mitchell. You've been most helpful," concluded Holmes.

"So you believe me then?" the engineer asked, looking hopeful.

"I'm sorry," replied Holmes. "Given the description of the circumstances in addition to your history, I'd have to say the apparition was a result of stress and overwork. You should really look into a holiday."

Dejectedly Mitchell let his chin fall to his chest.

Holmes turned to the attendant still with us and asked if it was true that there was telegraph station only two miles to the west. The attendant verified it was true and Holmes instructed him to have our bags rerouted from York station to Leeds, giving him enough money cover the expense plus a generous tip.

"Up for some exercise, Watson?" Holmes asked as he grabbed my arm and turned me towards the direction of the telegraph station.

I nodded and began to walk with him away from the train. After a few minutes of walking we heard the train whistle sound and the engine roar to life as the train continued its journey without us.

"Surely the man's testimony coupled with the evidence we found on the track was enough to prove his story," I voiced after being able to stand the silence no longer.

"Very good, Watson. He was indeed telling the truth. Subtle facial and body language confirmed that at least he _believed_ he was telling the truth, and our investigation of the scene corroborates." he replied.

"But why the deception?"

Holmes' face was serious and we walked several meters before he spoke.

"Watson, we are dealing with powers I've not come in contact with before. On many occasions, as you may well remember, the facts presented in our cases lean towards a supernatural or otherworldly cause, though in the end we always are able to bring light to the simple truth behind them. Recall the cases of the Speckled Band and the curse of Baskervilles, both odd circumstances leaning towards weird phenomena, but both simply and scientifically explained – both simply evil plots of desperate yet clever men.

"This time, however, I cannot account for the situation. The strange clothing, the boot print, the residue on the tracks, the timely telegram, the case of the cows, and the murder of Inspector Bridges are all somehow connected and at the moment I am at a loss as to what the connecting strands are in this web of deceit laid about us."

"You mention only the Bridges incident," I said, "Do you believe the telegram was entirely a fake and that a second official from Scotland Yard was not murdered?"

"We shall know soon enough. Assuming the messenger from the train was not an accomplice to the scheme, we should be receiving a telegram from Lestrade upon our arrival at the telegraph office either confirming or denying the murder."

We continued our walk and soon discovered that the distance to the telegraph office was more likely three miles instead of two. At Holmes' determined and unbroken pace, I was slightly winded by the time we walked up the steps and into the offices of the telegrapher.

"Yes, sir. We've just received a communication for a Mr. Tobias," the telegrapher said to us after Holmes' had given him the false name. "I've not typed it up yet, but here's the text if you can read my handwriting."

He handed the hand-written message to Holmes which read as follows:

"Tobias – Sorry haven't written. Two dogs have died and now a pup as well. My condolences, as pup is Bradley. Your rooms have been redecorated. Come home soon. – Margaret"

I raised my eyebrows at the unusual message, but looking at Holmes' face I saw a deep grief that I had not witnessed before. He seemed on the verge of tears and quickly exited the building without a word. I followed him in confusion, but waited for him to speak. He began to pace rapidly only stopping to bash his fist into a lamppost outside the telegraph office.

"Blast it all, Watson!" he exclaimed, pounding the lamppost in time with the syllables of his outburst.

"A coded message from Lestrade?" I asked.

"Yes, and a most disturbing one. This case has suddenly become very personal. Not since the Moriarty business have I felt so set upon," he said, still pacing up and down the sidewalk. "What to do, what to do?"

"What did Lestrade have to say?"

"He says he did not send the first telegram, but confirms that a total of two policemen have been murdered. And not only that, Watson, the fiend has struck out at an innocent. He has murdered one of the Baker Street Irregulars, poor Bradley … but a child …" Holmes was obviously overcome with emotion at this point, and halted his ceaseless pacing.

I stood silent and waited for him to compose himself.

After a minute, he stood up straight, the stoic presentation of resolution across his face.

"We shall take a coach to Leeds and visit my chemist acquaintance there to ascertain the properties of the residue we have collected. There we will break company, Watson. I will continue on to the Dales in disguise and see what I may learn there of this treacherous series of events. You will return to London and immediately track down my brother Mycroft. The message also says that Baker Street has been raided. If this criminal is set on hitting at me directly, he may go for my closest acquaintances, so Mycroft and Lestrade may both be in danger, not to mention yourself, Watson. You must arm yourself at all times and be prepared for anything."

I nodded my understanding, feeling a wave of dreadful foreboding wash over me. Again and again in the past had I moments of fear and trepidation when heading towards a climax of action while assisting Holmes, but this particular time I began to wonder if this would be the one adventure we would not survive.

Holmes went back in and sent a telegram to both farmers, Davison and Baker, to say that he was unavoidably detained and could not offer his assistance in the strange case.

We hired a hansom for the trip to Leeds and Holmes drove us at breakneck speed down the winding roads. He spoke in a near frantic voice as he drove and I had not seen him so flustered in all my years with him.

"Magicians can cleverly use smoke and mirrors to produce illusions. I've even known the necessity to use such methods myself on occasion, but the event on the rails is quite honestly beyond me. Our only lead is that vial you carry in your pocket."

"What do you make of the engineer's description of the vanishing man?" I asked.

"I can make nothing of it, Watson, and therefore I will leave it alone. We have been breaking one of my primary rules. We must follow the path of least resistance from now on, no matter how outlandish an ending it leads us towards. Our adversary obviously knew of my trip to Yorkshire before we left, which means he must have somehow gleaned the information from Mycroft. The murder of Bridges was an obvious attempt to get me to remain in London, whether for some sinister plan at that location or to keep me away from some crime about to occur in Yorkshire.

"Discovering I had left London, our adversary masterminded the interruption with the train and the delivery of the false telegram. Since we don't know the particulars of the two most recent murders, we cannot assume they are related, but it is most likely the same murderer after the same end result of me returning to London.

I tried to listen as much as I could, but my attention was diverted time and again to the road as we shot over bridges and through curves recklessly, once even turning the cart up on one wheel.

"Once we get to Leeds, I will send another coded message to Lestrade to make preparations for our return. You and I will be returning on horseback under cover of night."

"But Holmes," I interjected, gripping the seat cushion in fear of flying out of the hansom. "You said you were going to the Dales."

"I am going to the Dales, Watson," he replied. "But I am also returning to London. I shall explain once we reach the laboratory in Leeds."

The scenery shot by us in a blur. Considering our diversion away from the train, our enemies could not know our current whereabouts or our next destination. That did nothing to alleviate the feeling that even as we flew across the countryside we were being watched.


	4. 4 Revelations

4. Revelations

Holmes' contact in Leeds was a gentleman named Kenneth Buchanan, a chemist who operated a small collection of laboratories attached to the university there. Holmes had been corresponding with Buchanan for several years in regards to his own independent experiments in chemistry, and apparently the two held a great deal of respect for each other. Most often, when Holmes was unable to manufacture the results he desired in an experiment, Buchanan would be able to direct him towards a solution. It is for this expertise in the field of chemistry that Holmes had chosen him to assist us in this most unusual case.

One would think by the gracious amounts of geniality displayed by the two masters that they had been long friends. The truth was that neither had met each other in person. Buchanan was exceedingly pleased by our sudden visit and set right to inquiring as to the case his specialization would benefit.

The chemist was middle-aged, of short stature and dark in complexion. From above his lips sprouted an immense black moustache that was rivaled only by the hair on top of his head in its chaos. He wore spectacles perched on the knob of his nose and it was through these that he peered at the contents of the vial I produced for him.

"Interesting coloration," he said. "I presume that this is most likely the byproduct of some reaction, and judging by uneven coarseness of the granules I'd have to say it's likely a mixture of substances we're looking at."

"Precisely my feelings," commented Holmes. "Being lacking in the proper instruments in the field, I held off judgment towards any specifics."

"Well, we have all that you shall need here," Buchanan responded while gesturing to his lab and its collection of retorts, crucibles, alembics, and Bunsen burners.

"Though I would enjoy the opportunity to see you gather your results in person, Dr. Buchanan, I regret that Dr. Watson and I have some other business to attend to. We shall rejoin with you in an hour at the most," explained Holmes.

"Understood, my friend. I shall have something for you upon your return," replied the chemist and set off immediately to work.

We departed the laboratory with Holmes appearing in good spirits despite the serious and personal nature of the case we were now entangled in.

"I have the greatest confidence that Buchanan will be able to provide a most important clue to the events on the rail, and perhaps to the entirety of our current problem."

"He did seem rather keen on the idea of providing assistance to us," I mused.

"Indeed. Buchanan is one of the best in his field, and boasts an attention to detail that I find refreshing. It is rare to find an individual with such an eye for hidden meanings in chemical residues. Our interests in this regard are in the best of hands."

We passed quickly through the campus of the university, it having been only just incorporated following a number of years as a prominent school of medicine. Holmes had returned to his quickened pace and stalked through the streets with purpose. We departed from the sleek architecture of the blocks surrounding the campus university and soon found ourselves in the shadows of a neighborhood of lesser repute. The sun was finding rips in the clouds which allowed a fair amount of rays to beam down on us throughout the campus, but the district we had just entered seemed to repel sunlight unnaturally.

After several turns down dark twisting alleys, Holmes stopped in front of a low building with no windows. Being wedged between two larger buildings that appeared to be warehouses and having no street entrance, the place would have been easy to miss. This was probably due to its dark purpose – a haven for addicts – which I deduced from the acrid odor surrounding it.

"An opium den?" I whispered in surprise.

He elbowed me in the ribs with force and gave me a glare that immediately shut off any further attempt to question him or the purpose of our visit to such a low place. Just then, seeming to melt away from the wall of the place, a man appeared. I was shocked by his sudden appearance as just a moment before I would have sworn there was nothing in front of the building other than a pile of refuse.

The man was an Oriental – I thought most likely Chinese considering the number of them involved with these vile drug pits throughout England. My first thoughts were confirmed as he barked out a line of Mandarin at us. I noticed, to my surprise and sudden fear, that he was holding a cruel dagger just under the patchwork coat he wore. I surreptitiously slid my hand into my pocket where I kept a small knife of my own, cursing myself for having left my revolver on the train.

Holmes then responded in similar style to the man, and made a subtle gesture with his fingers at his waist. The Chinaman nodded and returned to his post, appearing once again as a pile of garbage. I had no time to ponder over the events that had just occurred as Holmes was then pulling me into a hell I had only entered once or twice before in similar dens back home.

The ceilings were uncomfortably low and most of the decorations were a dark tar-stained red. It was difficult to tell where the stains ended and the shadows began. Smoke hung like thin curtains drifting down from the hanging lamps sparsely scattered through the place. Holmes led me down a long corridor. I tried, but I could not keep my eyes from peering into the depths of the rooms to either side of us as we passed. All manner of men could be found here – fallen nobles, lost students, wastes of men, vaporous apparitions of humankind. Some stooped over low flames, some danced about chanting with eyes as luminous as the moon. One man stood naked in front of a broken mirror and wept.

I began to feel nauseous from the fumes, but Holmes pulled me forwards down an adjoining hallway. Finally we entered a room, but my relief turned to serious shock at what I witnessed there. The room was bare of furniture save for a ratty, old-fashioned chair with a high back. A small pit of coals lent the only light in the room, and there, lounging lazily in the chair with his feet propped up on a pile of dusty books was Sherlock Holmes!

Hearing us enter the room, he lifted his head from his semi-slumber and said in a voice I had heard a hundred times before," Holmes! What brings thee to this hebetudinous warren of langorous lassitude?"

"Lord Almighty!" I exclaimed and, whether a result of shock or simply the heavy inhalation of fumes, promptly fainted.

I recovered after a few moments and a few pulls from a flask of brandy the other Holmes had on hand. I nearly fainted again seeing two of them standing over me, but soon I could see the difference in the hairlines and intricate details of the facial structures. The other man was nearly an identical twin.

I was still speechless and the real Holmes quietly smirked to himself waiting for my assessment of this development. The other man handed me a cigarette which I gladly accepted and inhaled deeply, hoping the touch of tobacco smoke would refresh my lungs after the assault from the opium fumes.

"Dear me, Watson, take it easy on that," remarked Holmes a bit too late. I had just inhaled a large amount of marijuana smoke. I began to cough in spasms and the two men hauled me to my feet and forced another two swallows of brandy down my throat.

"May I introduce Mr. Tristan Brady," said Holmes, gesturing to the man next to him. "Tristan, this is my associate Dr. Watson."

"The ambit of such a momentous and fortuitous intersection of luminaries exceeds the limits of my skills in delineation," spoke the man.

"You will have to forgive Tristan's eloquent manner of speech," chimed Holmes. "The only book he has ever read was Roget's Thesaurus."

"The only book I ever finished, you mean, old boy."

"It is certainly a …" I hesitated a moment before continuing, "pleasure to meet you, sir."

"A pleasure shared, I'm sure," he replied, simply beaming. "The ever loyal Watson. At last we meet. Holmes speaks very highly of you. So much in fact that I sometimes wonder if you've both gone a bit Greek in all the time you have spent in each other's company."

At this he squeezed the plumpness of my stomach in jest.

"How dare you!" I exclaimed, extremely upset by his manner.

"Now, now, gentleman," chided Holmes. "We have serious matters to attend to. Will you join us, Tristan? We are returning to Buchanan's laboratory for the results of examination of evidence. We shall fill you in on the way."

"By all means, lead the way, dear Holmes," said Tristan.

As we exited the room Tristan winked and pursed his lips at me and it was all I could do to keep from giving the clown a bunch of fives.

"Watson's moustache dost bristle like the hackles of dog when he's fit to snap, eh?" he whispered to Holmes as we made our way back through the opium den. If I had not started to feel the shallow effects of the marijuana, I may have tackled him.

The walk was more leisurely as we made our way back to the campus. Holmes explained our adventures thus far and in turn relayed to me the relationship between the two strikingly similar gentlemen. Tristan had actually been an adversary of my friend in a case of theft some years back. Holmes had won out in the end, but not after he himself was nearly accused of the crimes by Scotland Yard. Tristan, discovering the famous Sherlock Holmes was on his trail, used his natural similarity to the man to his advantage and had proceeded to perpetrate several petty crimes in the guise of the famous detective. Once Holmes had sorted out the case, Scotland Yard dropped its case against my friend, but not before Holmes interceded on behalf of Tristan, succeeding in having his sentence commuted to community service as a tool against crime. Holmes paid him little, but apparently kept him in good supply of his drug of choice. When I questioned why I had never met the man before, Holmes explained how his look alike fit into to his methods.

"It is elementary. You have never met him, Watson, because I wish him only to be seen where I am not. Since you are often by my side on these cases, it is logical that you would never see the man," he explained.

I accepted this explanation, but I did not accept the conduct of this jester we had picked up. His attitude towards me was as if I were a sideshow act to be ridiculed and chuckled at. If not for my friend Holmes' need for the man, I would have promptly dispatched the poor fellow in the manner any former soldier would dispatch a pestering hoodlum such as he.

Suddenly it dawned on me what the course of action would be after we left Buchanan.

"Holmes!" I said, stopping on the sidewalk outside the laboratory. "I absolutely refuse to have this man accompany me back to London."

"Me thinks the Watson dost protest too much," came the retort from Tristan, and it was the last straw.

I lunged at the man with my fist cocked back, ready to deliver a punch that would lay out an ordinary man. I found out quickly that Holmes' profile was not the only trait they shared. In a move so quick that I was unaware it had passed until I was on the ground, Tristan used my momentum against me, cast me over his shoulder and flat onto my back. I lay there dazed for a moment, attempting to reconstruct where my attack had gone wrong.

"Do get up, Watson, we have no time to dawdle."

I had no idea which of them said it, but both stood over me with the same sly smirk on their faces.

When we returned to receive Buchanan's verdict we found the laboratory in a state of violent disarray, even on fire in some areas. Buchanan himself was considerably singed and covered with soot.

"Rubidium!" the chemist exclaimed, his face a radiant presentation of triumph.

"Are you sure?" replied Holmes.

"Normally found in extracts of zinnwaldite and other ores, but rarely ever in this state!" Buchanan cheered. "I have never actually had it available to study here in the lab. It was only recently discovered, you know. The thirty-seventh element. It is felt that in a decade or so we may use it for any number of highly advanced medical and scientific experiments. Its properties are quite remarkable."

"Remind me to apologize to you later, Watson," Holmes said absently in my direction.

Tristan chuckled at this and I began to fume once again.

"Yes, yes, it's a wonder the both of you were not blown to pieces on the way here – holding such a volatile substance in a glass vial without a protective oil to encase it. This can ignite merely with exposure to moisture," Buchanan explained.

I was not amused.

"But the remaining question is how does this fit in with the series of events so far?" mused Holmes.

He began to pace, sidestepping the debris in his path.

"Now that we know it is Rubidium, I think we can rule out that it is the byproduct of a reaction. More likely this is excess from it being the catalyst in the reaction," stated Buchanan.

"Could that mean that the man blew himself up?" I queried.

"That would not fit with Mitchell's description of the event. I have full confidence that what he saw actually happened. The man simply vanished. Besides it would take a blast of excessive magnitude to completely vaporize a man, and such a blast would most likely have derailed the train."

"This reminds me of the stories a friend of mine has written," said Tristan. He had seated himself upon a writing desk and was twirling a test tube between his fingers. "Wells is his name. Future fiction they are calling it. More science than fiction, I say. His ideas aren't too far from possibility."

"Yes, I'm acquainted with him," said Holmes. "However, I am not yet prepared to accept that there is anything but a simple solution to all of this."

"Well, I am sorry I cannot help you further," the chemist apologized. "Thank you though for the opportunity. I have saved a sample for further study. It will keep me busy for weeks."

Holmes stopped pacing and moved to shake Buchanan's hand in thanks.

"I cannot thank you enough for …" A reflection of light danced over Holmes face, and he suddenly turned his head towards the window. In a flash he was lunging at the chemist.

There was the sound of shattering glass and a second after Holmes hit the chemist with his full body, Buchanan's head erupted in a fountain of blood.

Tristan and I both dropped to the ground below the level of the windows. Holmes was cursing himself as he examined the chemist's wound.

There was silence for several moments before Tristan pushed himself to his feet and removed a revolver from a hidden holster under his coat. He peered out the window cautiously, using an unwindowed area of the wall for cover.

"There's an open window across the courtyard. I don't see anyone there," he reported.

"No doubt he has done what he came to do," spouted Holmes in fury.

I rushed over to Holmes and the chemist to see if there was anything I could do for the man, but Buchanan was already dead.

"Soft bullet," Holmes explained, turning the skull side to side to show the small entry wound and the gaping bowl of an exit wound. "Maximum damage. Tristan, head over to that open window across the way and see what you can find. If you have the chance, send someone for the local authorities. Be careful, and try not to touch anything."

Tristan nodded and left the laboratory, gun in hand.

"We have lost another good man to this damned scheme," Holmes lamented. "I cannot help but blame myself. How in God's name have I erred so much that death has seen fit to follow me in such a manner."

Holmes sat up and sighed, running his hands over his long face, now pale and gaunt from overexertion. He chanced to turn his head slightly and in doing so he noticed something embedded in the high wooden examination table.

"What's this then?"

He moved quickly to get a better look at it, then turned to face the shattered window. The object that had caught his attention was the bullet and its final resting place in the table, just below the thin granite top.

"The shooter could certainly have cleared the sill to hit the table at that angle," I noticed.

"Indeed, Watson, but what does that say about the shooter's aim?"

Holmes' brow was furrowed as he stood. For several repetitions he walked back and forth from the window to the table, holding his hand at different angles to measure trajectory.

"Watson, stand here," he said, pointing to approximately the point where Buchanan had been standing when Holmes had attempted to save him.

"Why would the assassin not aim at the point Buchanan's head was while he was standing where you are? It's readily apparent that I was not his target, and that in itself brings up a further line of questions. Why would our adversary not wish to kill me, thus taking me out of the equation? Either the man was a terrible shot and by some amazing coincidence happened to hit the mark as Buchanan fell …"

"Or the shooter knew that you were going to try and save him, and he aimed exactly where the chemist's head was going to be at the exact moment he fired."

The last voice was from Tristan who had returned with both the police and an ashen countenance.

"You need to come see this, Holmes."

Holmes silently nodded and we both followed Tristan over to the building with the open window. The building was an annex of the library that acted as a holding area for books not officially entered in the library's records. Literally thousands of books lined bookcase after bookcase. At the open window there was an apparatus which only slightly resembled a rifle. Its long barrel was thin but the butt end of the gun was heavy and square. A counter-balance hung from under the barrel to keep it from falling backwards on its stand. Holmes took great care to examine every detail of the scene.

"You two, please stand away from here, I don't want this area disturbed."

Tristan and I acquiesced and took up positions ten feet further away.

"This stand was preset so that the shooter only had to pull the trigger. The legs are kept steady by a strong adhesive on the stand's feet. But why would the suspect leave such a telling scene? The adhesive, the weapons construction – it can all be traced in the end."

Holmes peered down the barrel of the weapon which bore a remarkable telescopic sight.

"Just as I thought," remarked Holmes. "He was aiming exactly where the bullet hit."

Holmes then proceeded to examine the weapon itself. After a thorough examination, he depressed two buttons on its top, at which point a soft hissing sound began. The sound continued to grow in volume for several seconds before Holmes reached up and pulled the trigger. There was an audible and visible release of steam from the bottom of the butt of the weapon and a slight pop.

"A steam-powered rifle," concluded Holmes. "There are pellets of a volatile substance in the rear section of the gun that are released into a water reservoir with water from another compartment by pressing these two buttons. After a sufficient build-up of pressure, the trigger releases the steam with enough velocity to propel the bullet at speeds high enough to kill a man."

Tristan and I looked at each other, both only glimpsing the significance of the discovery in our minds.

"Two singular points are now clear, gentleman, and both point to one explanation," Holmes stated while standing up straight. His face was grave but I detected the same twinkle in his eyes that accompanied a sudden break in the case.

"You were not too far off when you mentioned Wells, Tristan. Particularly, I recall his fantastic story about the Time Machine. I put it to you both that, firstly, this adversary knows my every move before it happens, and secondly we are dealing with forces beyond our capacity to imagine. I bring to your attention also the small amount of familiar residue approximately where the shooter would have been standing to fire the weapon. Rubidium again."

I was dumbfounded at his statement. Always the rational man, Holmes never gave a moment's thought to the fantastic, the magical, the impossible.

"Our adversary, gentleman, is not from our time."


	5. 5 Identity

5. Identity

It was not difficult for Tristan and I to secure a means of travel back to London. With speed a necessity, we settled upon a pair of horses from a livery not far from the campus. As I looked back over my shoulder as we rode away from Holmes, I was disappointed though not surprised that my colleague was already beyond concern for either Tristan or myself. His eyes were ponderous, and his gait as he stalked towards the office of a coach service revealed the return of his singular dedication to the case at hand.

"Do I detect a wee bit of weeping, Watson?" Tristan japed from beside me.

I ignored his comment and spurred my horse down the backcountry trail we would take back to London. I led the way for a good long while before Tristan pulled even with me so he could speak.

"Sorry, old chap," he said to me, raising his voice above the wind and beat of hooves against the dirt road. "I'm only winding you up."

I pretended not to hear him and attempted to focus on the road.

"There's something I should tell you, Watson," he continued. "Things are not what they seem."

"Don't you think I know that, you fool," I yelled back at him. "I heard what he said just as well as you did."

The man was truly tearing down every defense I had against the rise of my own ire – a fury which I had kept control of for years since my adolescence when it was allowed to run rampant. Everything the man said smacked of ruse and jest at my expense. Something did not sit well with me about his appearance. The similarity to Holmes was too perfect.

"That's not exactly what I mean, Watson," he said as he steered his steed through a patch of deep puddles. "We should be extremely cautious from this point on."

I noticed then that his accent had changed a bit. In fact, it didn't really seem like the same person I had heard speaking earlier – as if it were another man altogether in the saddle parallel to me.

He saw this dawning realization on my face and smiled slyly to me.

"You've figured it out then? Good boy, I knew you weren't just a sidekick. No, never a doubt, Watson. I knew -"

I launched myself from my horse as soon as I had come within range of him. Our collision caused his horse to halt and rear up causing both of us hit the ground with force. Both horses galloped away into the woods on either side of the trail. By luck alone, Tristan was able to extricate himself from our tangle and stood over me, still smiling.

"Perhaps not," he said to me, finishing his thoughts.

Slowly I stood and prepared to take the imposter on in hand-to-hand combat.

"Now look, Watson. I've no quarrel with you. In fact, I need to convince you that I'm here to help you, but you're going to have to trust me."

"Keep your poisoned words to yourself, imposter," I shouted back at him. "You're the villain here. I'm just surprised at your ability to have duped my friend for so long."

Quickly, Tristan raised his hands and backed away from me.

"Me? A villain? Hardly," he chuckled. "Just calm down and we'll have a little sit-down and discuss this."

Tension hung in the air like a fog. I felt myself overcome with emotion at the audacity of this man.

I heard a rustle in the bushes to my right and assumed it was one of our horses come back. Tristan, however, was distracted by the sound. I used this moment to launch myself at him.

I hit the man with force and once again we hit the ground in a tangle. I immediately maneuvered to pin him and then punched him with a quick right hook to the jaw.

"Who are you?" I demanded of him.

He rolled his eyes and moved his jaw back and forth. "Good right hand there. Good lord, yes."

Again I hit him and I could tell my second punch hurt him.

"Alright, alright! I'll tell you! Just stop hitting me, you violent man. Earthlings … such violence." He closed his eyes and shook his head as if admonishing my entire race. "But first we should probably take care of the firebear behind you."

"That's it," I growled and reared my fist back to hit him again.

Just then a deafening roar thundered through the woods from just behind me. With came a sudden blast of heat that stole the air from the vicinity. I suddenly found myself out of breath and I fell away from Tristan to face the nightmare behind me.

Tristan was quickly on his feet facing the monstrosity as I took in the ghastly sight from my vantage point on the ground.

The beast was vaguely reminiscent of a bear, but patches of its fur were interrupted with large patches of reptilian skin like that of a crocodile. Fin-like protrusions were set on either side of its head and the majority of its face was reptilian, especially the eyes, though the bulk of its head was definitely more akin to that of a bear. The beast's back, while the creature was down on all fours, was almost eye level with me. Dragons sprung to mind, and suddenly I hoped against hope that the "fire" portion of the beast's name was not derived from a similarity to those mythical beasts of legend.

"Don't make any sudden movements, Watson. Get up slowly and do as I say."

I did as he said, my heart pounding in my chest, my brain reeling at this impossibility of nature.

"It won't attack us if we are still?" I ventured.

Tristan guffawed, "Ha! That would be convenient but no, dear Watson. It definitely knows we're here and it definitely intends to eat us – well done, in fact."

I reached my hand into my pocket carefully and fingered my knife, once again cursing myself for leaving my revolver on the train.

"Won't do you any good, that knife," Tristan said to me.

"What do you we do then? Wait for him to devour us like lobsters in a pot?"

"Just wait," he replied. "Firebears can't blow fire on call. They have to wait for a chemical to inflate a sack in their throats. They then expel the chemical while at the same time grinding flint like teeth in their jaws to ignite the chemicals. So I'd say we've got –"

The beast's throat suddenly started to expand rapidly.

"Five seconds. Run!"

Tristan was already headed for the woods and I belatedly scrambled after him.

A sound like a steam engine expelling exhaust sounded from where we had just been standing and the woods lit up with flames. My coat caught fire and I could feel the intense heat licking my back as I ran in pursuit of Tristan. From behind me I heard the beast trundling after us – the sound of air inflating his throat like a child blowing up a balloon.

Tristan suddenly disappeared over a ridge and just as I heard the sound of the firebear's second burst, I dove. There was a cliff over the ridge and I plummeted in complete panic for a few seconds before plunging into icy water. From underwater I saw the woods turn bright orange with the burst of fire that had followed me over the ridge. As soon as I surfaced, a hand covered my mouth and I was pulled back into a small cove at the point where the small cliff met the water.

Tristan whispered desperately in my ear. "Stay quiet and still. It doesn't like water, but if its hungry, it will chance losing its fire."

I yanked his hand away from my mouth and replied, "If it can't blow fire, then it's not so bad."

"Have you fought a grizzly bear with a fork before, Watson? No? Well, scrumming with that chap up there would be like fighting ten grizzly bears with a feather. Now please be quiet and maybe it will abandon us."

I pulled myself away from him and took up a position further into the little cove. It was then that I noticed that Tristan had changed. In fact, Tristan was in the process of changing as I watched. His appearance flashed from the Holmesish Tristan I had met to that of a wiry man in a tweed suit and bowtie. Finally, the Tristan appearance vanished completely.

Tristan, if that was his name, turned back to me and saw my face.

"Oh," he whispered reaching down under the water to his belt. "Not exactly waterproof, this."

He pulled a device from beneath the water that I had never seen the like of before. Apparently he had been wearing the device on his person.

"Perception filter," he explained, letting the object fall out of his hand and into the water. "Not exactly useful anymore either."

There was a roar that echoed through the woods, but it sounded further away.

Tristan nodded to himself and rose up further out of the water.

"That's that then. We'll just go the other way."

"Now wait just a minute," I said, half-swimming over to him and grabbing his lapels. "You're going to tell me who you are or I'm going to drown you right here."

The man sighed and nodded. "Let's get out of this water and I'll tell you everything."

I shoved him roughly toward the bank opposite us and he obliged.

Once we were out of the water, he shook like a dog, ran a hand through his wet, floppy hair, and extended a hand.

"Hello, I'm –"

Fire erupted around us with no warning. I dove back into the water, but the man I knew as Tristan stood his ground. Once the initial burst had dissipated, I spied the firebear that had snuck up on us. Tristan faced it down and removed a slender tool from his pocket.

"Stay in the water, Watson," he said to me. "I didn't want to do this, but we have no choice. Sorry, old chap."

As he said these last words, the device in his hand began to emit a high-pitched squeal like I've never heard before. I clasped my hands over my ears, but the pain the sound caused in my head did not abate. The firebear was obviously affected by it as well. The beast shook its head side to side desperately in pain as the throat sac began to inflate. The sound increased in intensity and just as it reached an unbearable peak, Tristan shouted "Down!" and dove into the water beside me. I quickly dove under with him.

As soon as our heads retreated beneath the surface, the woods exploded with flame. The water soon became unbearably hot and as I looked up from underwater, I saw the surface ripple as chunks of steaming refuse hit it. I soon realized this was flesh of the firebear.

After I couldn't hold my breath any longer I surfaced. Tristan was already out of the water and shaking his device to next to his ear, smiling.

"Sonic Screwdriver," he said holding the device out to show me, beaming. "Now THIS is waterproof. Ha ha!"

"Tristan , how did you -" I sputtered.

"Elementary my dear Watson," he said. "Ha! Did you hear that? I said 'Elementary, my dear Watson', ha!"

I only stared at him blankly.

"Sorry, yes. Nine hertz tone," he explained, waving his Sonic Screwdriver at me. "Created a static resonance in the firesacs. Can't stop that from causing a big BOOM, eh?

"Who –" I began to ask.

"Oh yes, as we were," he said extending his hand out to me again.

"Hello," he said to me, his eyes twinkling with mischief, yet deep with an unfathomable wisdom. "I'm the Doctor."


	6. 6 Behind the Curtain

6. Behind the Curtain

I recall staring blankly at his extended hand and feeling suddenly very alone. No thoughts coursed through my brain as I stood there in a stupor, the recent events having evaporated all rational cognitive processes from my mind.

The Doctor, who until so recently had been known to me as Tristan, took a step forward, seeing that my hand was not on a path to meet his own. Instead, he placed a hand awkwardly on my shoulder and rubbed it vigorously.

"Yes, yes, I know. I have this effect on people," he said boastfully, grinning with an unconvincing empathy. "I think I know what's going on in that brain of yours, Watson."

He maneuvered to stand directly in front of me and held eye contact.

Quietly he said, "Your mind has been evacuated. It's empty in there, and you're alone rattling around inside looking for something familiar. It's shock, Watson, but it's only shock because you're intelligent enough not to be able to dismiss it. Anyone else in this situation would have already glossed over it with conjured irrational explanations.

"You're a very, very smart man," he emphasized. "That brain of yours, inside that confining skull -"

He smirked at me, and for a moment I felt like joining in his mirth.

"It's bigger on the inside, isn't it Watson?" he asked knowingly.

With a final slap on my back he bounded away and brandished his device, his sonic screwdriver, and held it as one would hold a flashlight, pointing it about as it emitted a high-pitched warbling sound.

"Reminds me of a woman I know, bigger on the inside," he remarked, then suddenly stood up very rigidly.

"And, er, ha! …" He bounded back to me and put his arm around my shoulders conspiratorially. "And by that I mean, the TARDIS is bigger on the inside," he coughed nervously. "The old girl, the TARDIS … that wasn't … ah, innuendo, you understand, Watson."

He looked at me for a moment as a physician would, scanning for surface symptoms, angling his head as he did so.

"Well … I thought for sure that would snap you out of it."

After I didn't respond, he went back to operating his sonic screwdriver pointing it at different areas of the wooded area we were in, occasionally stopping to look at small readouts on the side of the device.

One thing he had said stuck with me. In my mind, addled as it was, there was a solid thing forming. I grasped on to it with all my mental effort and held it. The word melted through to other areas of my consciousness, leaving a residue of cognizance my brain used as fuel to power my recovery. The word pulsed through me and pushed its way through my lips.

"TARDIS?"

The Doctor stood still and his hand holding the sonic screwdriver fell to his side.

"Oh, Watson," he said, still facing away from me. "That's brilliant, old chum."

He spun around, his face beaming with pride. "Well done, sir! Ha!"

He briskly walked passed me and marched through the underbrush, still scanning the area.

Slowly, I was regaining some awareness. "Where are you going?" I asked.

From a distance, he called out, "We have to get back to London. On the double, good man."

"The horses have run off back to their stable, no doubt. We'll have quite a walk ahead of us," I pointed out to him.

"AHA!" I heard him shout. His sonic device was squealing excitedly, and he suddenly jumped out from behind a tree.

"Nonsense! I've found us a door!" he exclaimed.

I cautiously walked over to the area he was indicating, no longer sure I would be surprised by anything I would see while in his company.

I saw only trees and underbrush.

"When I say door, I mean an ancillary data stream connecting this location to another future point, feeding it with information and statistics on our actions here and preparing the next area in our quest to be incrementally more challenging," he explained, as if I understood.

"All we have to do is-" he paused a moment to make some adjustments on his sonic screwdriver. "Translate your pattern and mine into the language of the system and -"

He pointed the device at me and made adjustments to the tiny dials as he did so.

Turning the device away from me, the Doctor once again pointed it at the area where he had previously indicated a door existed, made some final adjustments, then turned to face me with a grave look.

"Now, listen to me very carefully, Watson. You haven't been asking very many questions. You seem to be trusting me. Why is that?"

The Doctor's manner had changed suddenly. His eyes reflected a dangerous graveness that made me feel as if I was on trial for some heinous crime.

"Not that long ago you were trying to smash my face in, and now you're absorbing what I say and displaying no amount of doubt in it."

The anger came flooding back to me in an instant. "I have just seen a man murdered in a fashion that would only suggest that some pre-cognizance of events had occurred. My friend and companion, whom I felt I knew absolutely everything about, has secretly been hiding an exact duplicate of himself from me for God knows how long. That duplicate has turned out to some bizarre doppelganger who can change his appearance at a whim. A fantastical creature has just chased me through the woods with the intent of devouring me only after it has cooked me thoroughly by breathing fire like a dragon. You dispatched said creature with a magic wand-"

"It's a sonic screw-"

"And now you're telling me we're about to walk through an imaginary door in the woods of northern England and suddenly end up in Piccadilly bloody Circus. I will tell you plainly, Doctor, I bloody well don't want to know the answers! That's why I'm not asking questions!"

My fists were clenched so tightly then that my fingernails were gouging cuts into my palms. I could feel veins pumping visibly at my temples.

"That's not it, Watson. And you know it."

He was studying me again, taking in as much of my reaction as he could.

"It's starting to bleed through, I think," he said in an off-handed manner.

"What are you talking about now?" I demanded, losing my patience.

"When I say daughter, what's the first thing that pops into your head?" he asked quickly.

"Coraline."

The name was spoken by me, but it felt as if the answer had come to me from a very long distance. An image flashed in my head of a young auburn-haired girl chasing butterflies in a garden. I recognized the garden but couldn't place it. In my mind's eye, the scene seem caged. There were impossible bars in the sky, confining the place I saw. It seemed a prison.

I couldn't explain the name or the image, but both felt extremely familiar. A rush of feelings hit me at that moment, accompanied by a stream of what seemed like memories. I saw myself with the little girl and an older woman who she favored. I saw a mirror image of me staring forward. I saw the cage.

The Doctor slapped me with force and I quickly noticed I had been on the ground and out of breath before he had brought me to.

"Sorry. Terribly sorry. Not yet, Watson. Not yet. We need to get away from here first," he apologized.

"What happened?" I asked him, feeling light-headed as I pushed myself up to stand.

"You fainted. It was expected."

"I saw visions. Places and people," I said, the words sounding ridiculous to me.

"I know it's difficult, but you should ignore them for now." He helped steady me and then lead me over to the area containing his "door".

"I need you to trust me just a bit longer, my friend, Watson. I'll tell you everything you need to know once we get to London and see Mycroft."

I nodded vaguely, still reeling from the flood of mental flashes that had just overwhelmed me.

The Doctor pull a small handheld rectangular device from his pocket and spoke to it, "Alright, Chief. Can you lock onto our signal?"

A voice answered him, emanating from the device the Doctor held in his hand.

"Locked on, Doctor."

"Excellent. I'm feeding our patterns into the data stream now. If you'd be so kind, please make sure we end up with our good friend Mycroft, and not in Siberia," he said with a sideways wink to me.

"I'll try my best, sir," came the response.

The Doctor turned to me and exuded a mysterious sense of infinite wisdom as he spoke to me, "I knew a fellow that said, 'All the world's a stage'. And, well, he's partly right. There is that which is apparent to all of us, being enacted by us and before us by other people. We are all part of the same endless act. But with any successful production, dear Watson, there's a great deal going on behind the curtains that we can't see – that we shouldn't see. I'll say this: Don't go looking for the men behind the curtain unless you're prepared to face the possibility that you are merely a puppet in someone else's show."

The Doctor wielded his sonic screwdriver again and aimed at a point in space. "Brace yourself, Watson. This ride may be a bit unsettling." He activated the sonic screwdriver which emitted a painful high-pitched shriek. " Chief, on my mark. Three … Two … One … Now!"

The sound of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver grew louder and I felt something akin to a violent push from behind me. My body did not change position, but a small circular hole grew in mid-air before me. I then realized the hole was not growing larger – I was growing smaller in proportion to it. The scene froze momentarily and then the woods around me begin to smear like someone had rubbed up against a wet painting of trees. All around me, the environment was stretching out to infinity. I could no longer feel my body, but I felt my soul being stretched out along a thin line as I, too, began to smear. With a deafening explosion of light and sound, I felt myself being pulled across a phenomenal distance at terrible speed. My sanity threatened to evaporate and my attempts to scream were blunted by the sudden realization that I no longer had a body.

With a lurch and a grotesque sense of being reassembled from scratch, I was whole again, in London, standing outside the home of Mycroft Holmes, my good friend's similarly adept sibling. I promptly pitched forward in a faint and collapsed into a refuse bin set outside Mycroft's front door.

When I awoke, I noticed I had been propped up in an alley next to Mycroft's building. The Doctor was speaking into the rectangular device again.

"I haven't told him yet, no," he was saying. "The realization of the truth at this point could unravel everything. We have to keep him in the mindset he was in previously for just a bit longer. This all hinges on him."

"Doctor, you're risking his life," the voice answered. "There must be another way."

"There is no other way!" the Doctor shouted, obviously louder than he had wanted. He quickly turned towards me, but I remained still with my eyes shut, feigning unconsciousness.

"Trust me," the Doctor said in a calmer tone. "I can get us all out of this, but you must do as I say. You probably have one last chance to do this before it's on to us, and we need him focused and not thinking about his past."

"Very well, Doctor," the voice replied. "Give us a few minutes."

Without warning, a desperate idea formed in my head. I know not why the thought suddenly occurred to me, but I felt I only had a short time to complete the task I felt needed to be done. An broken inkwell had been discarded in the alleyway and a minute volume of fresh ink was reserved in the broken glass. The Doctor still had his back turned to me and I stealthily reached out and stuck a finger in the ink. Rolling up my right sleeve, I wrote "Coraline" with my inked finger across my bared forearm. I quickly covered my arm again with my sleeve and feigned sleep again.

As I lay there, I sensed the Doctor approaching me and standing over my seated form. A strange tingling sensation began in my head and I felt distinctly as if heavy parts of my brain were dropping away. My mind felt lighter and I opened my eyes not understanding what had just happened.

The Doctor took my hand and helped me to my feet. "There we go, old boy. Upsy-daisy. Let's go see our friend, Mycroft, shall we?" He bounded off down the alley towards the front street expecting me to follow, but he stopped short and looked at his hand.

"What's this?" he queried to himself. "I don't have a leaky pen on me again, do I?"

His left hand was smeared with ink and he began vigorously wiping it on his trousers.

"Pencils, Watson. Always use pencils, I say. Pens are very bad for the wardrobe – very bad indeed. I wonder where this ink came from."

He spun on his heels and marched off again to the entrance of Mycroft's building. When he was out of sight and around the corner of the alley, I looked down at my left hand and the ink smeared there. I had no recollection at all of how it had come to be on my hand. Calmly, I followed the Doctor without a word.

As I turned the corner, the Doctor was brazenly entering Mycroft's door without knocking. I chased after him and only just slipped in the door before he slammed it shut behind him.

He turned and started violently, "Oh! Watson! You sneak!" he exclaimed.

"Nearly stopped both my hearts. I thought you were outside," he panted, holding his chest. "Good gracious me. Good lord."

I huffed my displeasure at him and proceeded into Mycroft's study ahead of him.

The elder Holmes's study was large and impressive. Legal tomes lined shelves set into every wall, which were a rich and dark polished wood. The floor was adorned with impressive rugs covering the worn wooden slats. The furniture seemed pristine and untouched, and two large leather chairs seemed to have never been sat upon in their life.

Mycroft himself was a large fellow, boasting a rotund stature in opposition to his gaunt younger brother's. When the Doctor and I entered the room, the elder Holmes was seated at a large desk facing a huge curtained window that normally offered a view of a poorly maintained, yet expansive garden. At least one of the windows was cracked open and a breeze gently rolled through the curtain like waves on the ocean.

Before I could clear my throat, Mycroft spoke to us in admonishing tones without turning to face us.

"I trust you haven't tracked in the week's rubbish, Watson," he said, scribbling in a large opened ledger.

Mycroft's powers of deduction surpassed even that of my friend's; however, his excessive apathy to anything but his own business did not lend the same sense of nobility found in the younger Sherlock, exhibited by the latter through his repeated, if circumstantial, contribution to the welfare of society.

"So you heard us then?" the Doctor surmised.

"I can smell you," he spat, still writing. "I assume that's Tristan's voice I hear, disguised as it might be."

"Yes, Mycroft," I sputtered. "We've come to -"

"Where is my brother? Too good to show his face here?"

"He's in Yorkshire where you sent him," I answered. "He sent us back to investigate the murders here."

"Ridiculous!" Mycroft barked, refusing to stop his writing to turn around to face us. "Why would I send Sherlock to Yorkshire?"

"Careful, Watson," the Doctor whispered to me.

I was at a loss. Sherlock had told me that it was specifically Mycroft who had turned him onto the cow case we had been on our way to investigate when our train was stopped.

"Sherlock said you had turned an acquaintance of yours to him for aid in a matter," I explained.

"What acquaintance was this, Watson?" Mycroft had stopped writing and sat up straight, but still did not turn to face the Doctor and myself.

"He said you had met the gentleman on one of your occasional trips to Yorkshire."

"Trips to Yorkshire? Me? Preposterous!" he snapped, pushing his mass up from the desk. "Now look -"

Mycroft spun as fast as his girth would allow and his eyes fell immediately on the Doctor.

"My God, Watson, what have you done?" whimpered Mycroft, his face completely drained of its color. He backed into his desk, overturning his inkwell which spilled black ink onto the rug. "You've brought the devil himself into my home!"

"Uh yes," began the Doctor. "Bit of a mix-up here, I think. I'm -"

Mycroft turned a lethal gaze to me and pointed a stubby finger accusatorially at the Doctor. "You're in league with this villain?"

"I beg your pardon, sir," the Doctor protested. "I've never been so insulted in my … well, there was that one time, but come on, really? Name calling?"

Mycroft turned back to the Doctor. "How are you even alive? My brother said you fell to your death, you fiend!"

Holmes words set off sudden alarm bells in my head. The man standing next to me was no longer recognizable in my mind, though his appearance had not changed. Panic gripped me as I berated myself for having been such a blind and ignorant fool. Without a second wasted, I lunged for the bookcase to my right and opened a hidden compartment where I knew Mycroft stored a loaded handgun. Snatching it I spun around and aimed it directly at the man who I had been traveling with since I parted company with Sherlock.

"Moriarty!" I shouted victoriously. Hatred seethed within me, though my mind had not reconciled how our most dangerous nemesis had cheated death and managed to dupe both my brilliant friend and myself all this time.

"Whoa!" the Doctor shouted, throwing his hands up in the air. "Now wait a minute, Watson! Don't listen to him!"

"Kill him, John!" Mycroft shouted. "Kill him now or he'll wreak havoc across the globe! You've got him!"

My hand clenched tight around the gun and my finger began to tighten on the trigger. The villain had nearly killed all of us. His evil machinations had very nearly defeated my friend. Moriarty was the worst foe any of us had ever faced. At that moment, I knew that it was my duty to rid the world of his filth once and for all. I squeezed the trigger.

"Jeffrey don't!" shouted the Doctor.

My finger straightened within at atom's width of the trigger firing the gun. He had called me Jeffrey, and somehow I was convinced that Jeffrey was my name. Furthermore, I noticed ink on my right arm, peeking out from under my sleeve. With my left hand, I pulled back the sleeve and saw, in ink I had fingered onto my skin, the name "Coraline".

Again, my mind was flooded by images of the girl, the woman, and the cage across the sky. My arms dropped to my sides and I saw the Doctor, paler than Mycroft had been, heave a sigh of relief. I knew it wasn't Moriarty in front of me, and I couldn't explain why I had suddenly felt it was.

"You humans," he remarked. "Always finding a way over the wall. When did you write that -"

Both of us saw it at the same time in the periphery of our vision. The curtains were moving in a manner unlike waves on the ocean. Someone was there.

"Mycroft!" the Doctor shouted. "Behind the curtain!"

Both us bolted towards the doomed man, and I clearly remember seeing the gun emerge in slow motion from between the billowing curtains. Mycroft neither saw nor felt his death. The Doctor dove too late, and by the time he impacted the elder Holmes's body, the bullet had done its fatal damage. Both men fell to the floor heavily before me and I began to fire wildly into the curtains, not caring who or what lay in wait behind them.

Having emptied the gun of bullets, I brazenly ran forward and ripped the curtains aside. No one was there. I stepped gingerly out the open window and gazed around the garden looking for the murderer. Scrambling over an exterior wall, I leaped down to the street and sprinted up and down the block, trying to discover where the person behind the curtain had gone. Whoever it was had made a swift retreat.

Reluctantly, I returned to the study to what I knew was another victim in this horrible game being played.

The Doctor was kneeling over the body and waving his sonic screwdriver over its crumpled mass. He then looked at the readings on the bizarre device.

"Poor Mycroft," I sighed. "Sherlock will have my head for this."

"No worries," said the Doctor, leaping to his feet. He looked down at his trousers and noticed he had knelt in a puddle of spilled ink. "Oh no! Ink! Again! I swear I'm going to travel back and wipe the mind of the idiot that invented ink before he has a chance to ruin a pair of trousers. Pencils! Pencils!"

"No worries? He's dead!" I shouted, my anger rising once again to a boil.

"He was never alive," the Doctor said. "He's an advanced positronic construct. Watch."

He aimed the sonic screwdriver at the body and in a flash the flesh that was once Mycroft Holmes dispersed into glowing particles like dust motes in a ray of sunlight.

I was not shocked. I did not even blink at what I had just seen. What I needed to know more than anything was exactly who I was and why I was there.

"You called me Jeffrey."

"That's your name."

"I'm not Dr. John H. Watson?"

"No," he said quietly. "You're not."

"Who is Coraline?" I muttered, tears filling my eyes as I knew the answer already.

"She's your daughter, Jeffrey. And she's safe. So is your wife. I've seen them both."

Staring at the Doctor I asked the most important question.

"Why am I here?" I demanded.

"Jeffrey," the Doctor said with sadness. "You're not really here."


	7. 7 Child's Play

7. Child's Play

"Sit down, Jeffrey," the Doctor said to me. Calmly, I pulled up Mycroft's desk chair and sat down.

"What I'm about to tell you is dangerous," he said. "I can't stress that enough. As I tell you this, we may see an increase in resistance against us."

With a sigh, he ran his hands through his hair and paced the room for a moment. I was aware that he was struggling with whether or not to tell me the whole truth, and for that moment, his face betrayed a deep compassion for whatever my dilemma was.

"Please, Doctor. Tell me everything," I requested evenly. I felt at ease and peaceful. In my mind's eye, I could see the girl the Doctor had informed me was my daughter.

The Doctor stopped pacing and faced me. "I told you earlier that you're a brilliant man, Jeffrey. I was being modest on your behalf. Your genius exceeds even my own in some respects. When I said that you were not really here, it wasn't entirely true. This place _is_ you."

"I don't understand," I admitted.

"I can't just tell you what's going on here all at once. Bear with me." The Doctor began pacing again and stopped short at an end-table with Mycroft's chessboard on it.

"You're fond of chess, aren't you?"

"Are you asking Watson, or Jeffrey?"

"Clever man," the Doctor said, grinning. "I'm actually telling you, Jeffrey, that you like chess. In fact, you like all manner of games. Your passion is the challenge of a new game, a new battle of intelligence – one mind against the other. And, oh Jeffrey, you're so very good at what you do."

"This is a game," I surmised.

"This is _the_ game," he corrected.

"Jeffrey, you've mastered every game they've thrown at you. You've beaten the greatest minds of mankind, you've even beaten computers. People have lined up, filling the streets, to test your mind against the unsolvable, the unbeatable, the unbreakable. You've beaten them all."

It seemed the Doctor had finished his preface to the larger truth he had been hesitating to reveal to me. Placing his hands in his pockets, he strode slowly towards me.

"It's the year 4213. The human race is expanding their foothold in the galaxy further than ever before. Your species, your beautiful, wonderfully brilliant, and tenaciously headstrong species is making a name for itself among the stars, and by doing so – whether for good or bad – you are being noticed by other intelligent species.

"You – Jeffrey Peterson – have gained notoriety beyond your race. Other species are now challenging you. And with new opponents come new games," the Doctor paused a moment. "Did you hear that?"

I listened but heard nothing. The Doctor looked up to the ceiling and was silent for a moment. "Probably rats, or squirrels or something – nevermind."

"Not too far from the human colony on Dreides VII, your home," he continued, "there is an alien species known as the Huulanix. Brilliant gamers. They've perfected virtual reality to the point that to enter a virtual reality game you are actually controlling avatars in a _real_ miniature universe. This is where we are right now."

The declaration suddenly opened a door in my mind that had been closed. I felt that what he was saying was absolutely true and could begin to piece together the rest of the story myself.

"I chose Sherlock Holmes," I said.

"You created this version of Sherlock Holmes' world from your own creativity," he corrected. "Your favorite books as a child, your greatest hero and inspiration, the Huulanix took your vision of it and made it this reality. You know this world better than anyone else left in the human race and you've created a game that has sparked the imagination of hundreds of worlds. Everyone loves to watch you play, side by side with your personal hero, Sherlock Holmes. It's like television for them.

"You've been challenged your whole life, Jeffrey, but have never found a challenge you couldn't conquer."

"Until now," I said, completing his thoughts.

"Not entirely your fault, Jeffrey," he said sympathetically. "Sometimes our greatest adversaries are ourselves. No one blames you for what has happened."

"What has happened?"

The Doctor hesitated. I could tell he was still keeping some vital information from me. Just then, I heard the scratching sound coming from above us, followed by the sound of several feet running through the rooms on the second floor.

"Listen, Jeffrey. No matter what happens, you must remember that most of this world is being created through your thoughts. This game was intended to best you," he explained.

"And the rest of it?" I queried.

The door to the room we were standing in burst open and several ragged looking children filed in.

"The Huulanix weren't intelligent enough to beat you themselves," he said, backing away from the urchins moving slowly towards us. "So they built a giant quantum computer, a massive super-intelligent brain to challenge you. They call it the Prime Machine. It controls this world, and you are its opponent."

I slowly stood from the chair and backed towards the open window which Mycroft's killer had taken his shot from, bumping into the desk as I did so.

More children poured into the room. To my horror, several of them sprang up and latched onto the walls like spiders and began crawling up them to the ceiling above us.

"And the Firebear?" I asked, preparing to flee out the window with the Doctor who was similarly angling himself to retreat.

"Bit of my own thoughts there – before I was able to block out my mind from the connection with the Prime Machine," he said, smiling apologetically. "Sorry about that."

"What happens if I'm killed here – in this reality?" I asked, suddenly realizing what this all meant.

"Then you die there – in the other."

The children stopped their movement and stood staring at us. On the ceiling, the ragged youth turned their heads like owls on impossibly limber necks to glower down at us.

"Where is Mr. Holmes?" one of them, a particularly evil-looking child, said.

"Popped out for a late night snack I suppose," the Doctor answered flippantly.

"You shouldn't be here," a little girl said to the Doctor. "You are not connected."

"You see how fast it realized what I was telling you, Jeffrey? You are connected to the Prime Machine, and it intends to keep you here until you beat it or it beats you. I trust these are the infamous Baker Street Irregulars – a fitting name in the circumstances. Quite, er, irregular."

"I fancy a late night snack myself," the lead boy said. His face transformed into a feral, fanged visage – an unholy mockery of innocent youth. "I think I'll have a bit of the fat one."

"Look, I'll have you know I've been traveling and I often eat more when bouncing about the universe," the Doctor said, patting his stomach. "Diets are difficult to maintain when you're saving the universe from -"

The rest of the street urchins transformed into their malevolent masks.

"- whatever you are."

The lead boy snarled and crouched to spring at the Doctor. Quickly, I kicked Mycroft's chair between the creature and the Doctor. The boy sprang at that moment and the chair knocked him off balance, preventing him from reaching the Doctor with an open mouth full of razor sharp teeth. The boy crumpled to the ground, but leaped to his feet with cat-like agility. The rest of the crowd of children sprang forward at us.

"Run!" the Doctor yelled, with an edge of panic in his voice.

We dove through the open window, one after the other, and sprinted across to the garden wall. The children, if they could be consider so, poured out from the house, tearing glass, frame and curtains with them. Deftly, the Doctor scaled the wall and paused at the top to help pull me over.

"Running from children," I panted, vaulting myself over the top of the wall. "Have you ever heard of something so ridiculous?"

"Oh, I don't know," the Doctor said with a smile after we were both on pavement. "I'm used to this sort of thing by now."

A handful of children leaped over the wall and landed near us, and we took off at a sprint again.

"There's an alley just through here," I yelled to the Doctor, leading the way. "Tight quarters."

The alley was similar to the one I had used to surreptitiously gain entrance to my own home without attracting the notice of the same Baker Street Irregulars that now chased us with their demonic cries. It all seemed so long ago that I had existed as just a normal person in this place. I pondered, as we ran, how realistic it all was. The path we took connected to several other small alleyways between houses and we made erratic turns, losing our own way in the process of trying to evade the Irregulars. For a good while, I heard their pursuit, a cacophonic row of demonic chitters, howls, and screeching. Then it gradually faded away.

After what seemed like ten minutes of continuous flight, the Doctor called for a halt and we stood gasping for air, bending at the waist while trying to catch our breath.

"We've lost them, it seems," I said.

"Jeffrey, this is a game world. The Prime Machine knows where we are. It's toying with us."

"How do we get out?" I asked, desperately wanting to exit the nightmare I then found myself in.

"I can leave at any time," the Doctor explained. "All I have to do is give the signal."

"And what about me?"

The Doctor stood up straight and stretched his back.

"Well, that's a bit more difficult."

"Explain." My ire was growing. I had not been frustrated with the Doctor in a good while, but my irritation was rising and I felt like punching him again, as I had earlier.

"You're connected," he offered. "Wires and electrodes, life-support, all sorts of fascinating little things that go 'bleep' and flashy lights and such."

"So have them disconnect me," I stated.

"That's the tricky part," he said, wagging his finger at me. "Your brain is both transmitting and receiving information directly from the Prime Machine. To sever that connection suddenly without properly having you shut down those connections yourself could completely short out your brain. You'd be a vegetable."

Roughly, I grabbed him by his lapels. "I want out of here. Now!"

"I wondered if all that anger was part of the Watson persona, or if it was really you."

"It's me," I said evenly. "I've always been one for short bursts of temper."

I let him go and dropped to sit upon the pavement, holding my spinning head.

"What do we do?"

"You'll need to completely disconnect your senses from this place. Don't listen to anything, don't see anything, don't smell the air. Don't even _think_ about anything having to do with this place. Your mind must be absolutely blank, Jeffrey."

"That's a tall order, considering we're being chased by an army of demon children," I said jokingly.

"Yes. Well … I wonder where they went to," he said. He took a moment to listen to the sounds of the city and walked back and forth up the alley looking for signs of pursuit.

"We should try it now," he decided. "While we have a reprieve. Close your eyes."

I eyed him with skepticism. I would be completely at his mercy, and I still was not completely sure I could trust the stranger.

"Trust me, Jeffrey," he said calmly. "I'm going to get you out of this."

I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind.

"Replace every sense you have of this place with something. If you hear a dog bark, imagine an elephant trumpeting. If you smell a trash bin, imagine the smell of roses. Just whatever happens, do not focus on anything in this reality."

I did as he said. The cobblestones under me I imagined as sand on a beach. The dampness of the air I imagined as sea spray.

"That's good, Jeffrey," he encouraged. "Keep it up just a bit longer."

He pulled his communication device from his coat and spoke into it. "Chief, stand by to extract us. Let me know when it looks safe on your end."

The device crackled to life and the Chief's voice came through. "He's not receiving anything, but he appears to be transmitting something."

"I'm thinking of the beach," I said.

"Is he transmitting, or is something -" the Doctor paused a moment. I opened my eyes and saw him staring at a point behind me. "- being downloaded?"

I closed my eyes again, cancelling out the smells, tastes, and feelings of the environment. Then I heard a sound I could not cancel out – a long, rolling canine growl.

"Jeffrey," the Doctor said with alarm in his voice. "Stand up very slowly and don't make any sudden moves."

I opened my eyes and was about to look behind me when the Doctor exclaimed, "Don't turn around, it'll only make it worse."

Slowly, I pushed myself up, the dog's growls growing louder and closer to me.

"Chief, stay with us," the Doctor said into his communication device. "Jeffrey, come stand next to me and turn around slowly. We don't want to provoke it."

"Provoke what?" I asked, moving to stand next to him.

"You had a very, very, very big dog in your head, Jeffrey," he explained. "The Prime Machine has pulled it out of your mind and is now using it against us."

Carefully, I turned around and had to grab the Doctor's arm to steady myself when the beast came full into my view.

It was the Uxbridge's rottweiler and it stood five feet high at its shoulder.

"Oh my god," I uttered.

"Oh your dog, you mean, ha ha," the Doctor joked, then look embarrassed for himself. "Bad timing. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

The huge beast barked and its fetid breath blew back our hair.

"How do we get out of this one, Doctor?" I asked.

"I don't think running will work this time," he admitted. "But I may have an idea."

The rottweiler took a few steps toward us, its growl growing only more menacing.

"That … thing … is a construct of your mind. It exists here because you made it exist, Jeffrey." Carefully, keeping as eye on the dog, the Doctor spoke to the Chief. "Is Jeffrey still transmitting?"

"Affirmative, Doctor," came the reply.

"Jeffrey, that image is being pulled from your mind as we speak. You may still have control over it. Try and alter it to something we can handle."

I closed my eyes and tried to think of something less menacing.

"Jeffrey, no! Goodness gracious me!"

I opened my eyes. The rottweiler had become a huge, slimy black monstrosity with tentacles that writhed towards us.

"Sorry! Lovecraft snuck in!" I apologized and tried to clear my mind.

"Ah!" the Doctor said after a few seconds. "That's much better."

Before us stood a small chihuahua.

"Yes, well, not so tough are you now, eh, little guy?" he said, bending down to pet the dog. The dog barked, but its voice was still that of the monstrous rottweiler. The Doctor jumped back with a yelp, snatching his hand back to his person.

"Bad dog!" he barked back at it. The chihuahua barked again and ran at us.

"Run!" the Doctor yelled, spinning on his heel. "Again!"

I followed his lead, the small dog barking and snapping right at our heels, literally. We reached the end of the alleyway and both the Doctor and I skidded to a halt before a small girl standing alone.

"Coraline?" I said, recognizing my daughter.

"That's not Coraline, Jeffrey, it's just -" the Doctor broke off as the chihuahua bit into his ankle and shook the bottom of his trousers viciously.

As he struggled to free himself from the ferocious yet tiny animal, I moved toward the image of my daughter. I had not seen her in the flesh for what seemed like decades. She was just as I remembered her, innocent and beautiful.

"Coraline," I said to her, beaming with a smile. I felt no fear and the Doctor's interrupted warning was erased from my mind as easily as tissue reduced to nothingness by fire. "Come here to me, my little girl."

"Jeffrey!" the Doctor screamed, still struggling violently with the tenacious dog. "Whatever you do, don't touch it! That's not your daughter!"

But I couldn't hear him. None of his struggle or his words reached me. I glided forward to receive my daughter into my arms. "Coraline …"

"Daddy?" she said in her tiny voice. "Are you my daddy?"

"Jeffrey! Don't!"

She was a few feet away from me, moving into my arms. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else existed.

Then I heard: "Chief! Take us out! Now!"

And then all I saw was the deepest darkness my soul had ever known.


	8. 8 Reality

8. Reality

I am an old man now – I can feel it with each minute movement of my frail and failing body. I ponder the realities of being able to count my remaining years on the fingers of my hands, or perhaps even just one hand. As I reflect back on the events I have related to you here, I know without doubt that years were shaved off my life in the despairing darkness I found myself in when I was pulled from one reality to the next.

My last vision before the darkness was of my daughter's bright and shining form before me – my first vision as I came roughly back to consciousness was of her mother, seated next to my hospital bed. Her silhouette in the window blocked the rectangular framing around the window panes, but beyond those solid geometric patterns there was another more extensive grid across the strangely orange sky in the distance.

"Jeffrey?" her voice called to me out of the fog in my mind. "Can you hear me?"

"I can see you, Elizabeth," I replied. I clenched a hand I had not used in some time around what I soon discovered was her own hand. My voice was weak and tremulous, dry and cracking like sandpaper over pebbles.

She leaned forward and her smile brightened the room. Her face came into sharp focus, as well as the tears rolling down her cheeks.

"Coraline?" I asked, my daughter's face still fresh in my mind from the other reality.

"She's wonderful, Jeffrey," she replied with joy. "We're so happy that you're well."

I managed a smile of my own as I gazed at her, but my eyes fell slowly to the window and the great cage I had seen in my visions in the other reality – the game.

"The cage. It's the environmental shield," I remembered. "This is Dreides VII."

"That's right, Jeffrey," she confirmed. "This is our home."

I clenched her hand tighter. Memories, fresh ones full of life, were flooding back into my soul like deep dry hole being filled for the first time in centuries. Cracks and crevices in my recollections were quickly being filled. "When can I see Coraline?"

"Soon, darling," she said soothingly, rubbing my hand with her own.

"How much do you remember about what happened, Jeffrey?" said a voice to my other side. I recognized it, but the associations I made with it were laced with fear and turmoil. I turned my head to see the source of the voice and there stood the Doctor, the man who had apparently saved my life.

"I suppose we have you to thank for saving me?" I asked him.

"You have yourself to thank, Jeffrey," he replied. His eyes belied something unsaid and I knew from his gaze that whatever danger I had just been extricated from, it was not over. "But I really must insist you try and remember what happened. Your mind endured an incredible amount of stress when we brought you out of the game. I was afraid you wouldn't make it."

I looked to Elizabeth, trusting her guidance. She nodded her head and I settled back against my pillow and tried to assimilate the memories of my ordeal.

"I was Dr. Watson." I began. "Holmes and I were investigating a case in Yorkshire."

I hesitated. The scenes were blurry in my head and it felt as if they were faded by time – even crumbling before my mind's eye.

"What happened while you were on the case?" the Doctor cued.

"We were diverted – a man was on the tracks and vanished." I explained, but as I did so a nagging doubt rang from somewhere in my subconscious. There was a missing piece here that even the Doctor had not considered. I could not hold onto it, and it slipped away.

The Doctor moved from his position beside my bed and went to the door. Calmly he opened it and leaned out briefly, speaking to someone in the hallway before coming back to stand next to me.

"Was he described as looking something like this?" the Doctor asked.

A man with bright yellow hair and thick rubber-soled boots entered my room. I recognized the man, and suddenly made the connection to the alternate reality – a clue I had been unable to discern previously while still in the game.

"Chief Galen!" I exclaimed. "But then – you were in the game?"

The chief nodded silently, a smile on his face.

"Without his expertise, we'd likely never have found you," the Doctor explained. "Chief was the first man to go in. Unfortunately, the Prime Machine didn't want him there, and placed him in quite an uncomfortable position."

"That's the last time I ever want to look a roaring locomotive in the face, I can tell you," the Chief said cheerfully, his gruff demeanor bringing a smile to my face.

"And the Rubidium?" I said, beginning to place the puzzle pieces closer together.

"Well," the Doctor said, "I suppose I could have been more help in Leeds, but it was important we didn't reveal too much to you at once. As I had said to you before, the game world is actually a miniature universe. The Rubidium was simply a by-product of entering that universe from this one. You're lucky you didn't blow yourself up."

"You knew what it was all along!" I accused.

"Ha! Yes, well, er," the Doctor juggled a response. "You were perfectly safe."

There was a silent pause.

"Sort of," he quipped. "But anyway, you're here safe now and soon you'll be able to see your lovely daughter, Coraline. And I'll be adjourning to take care of the little Huulanix problem we have and that should sort things out rather nicely then, right? Right." The Doctor clapped his hands together and rubbed them excitedly. "It's wonderful to have you back safe and sound, Jeffrey. We had quite the little adventure didn't we?"

"I should say so," I replied with a hint of fury. "I wonder just how much safer it could have been."

"There's that fiery charm I've come to love," he joked, beaming his smile at me. "Now, I believe there's someone who has been dying to see you. Mrs. Peterson, may I have the honor?"

Graciously, she nodded her approval to him and he leaped to the door and threw it open. "Coraline?" he called down the hall.

My daughter, just as bright and full of life as I remembered her, ran into the room and jumped on my bed, embracing me a slightly painful hug, but one I took with grace and showering relief.

"Daddy!" she exclaimed, burying her head into my chest. It was the happiest I had felt in a very long time. The ages it seemed I had been trapped in the game fell away from me like ice breaking away from a melting glacier. My soul shined forth from deep within me.

From the corner of my eye, I saw the Doctor smile to himself and surreptitiously exit the room.

I pulled on Elizabeth's hand and together we all embraced each other, tears of joy running down our faces.

It was the last time we would ever embrace in that way.

After our initial reunion, I drifted off to a deep slumber and was haunted by visions of the ordeal I had endured in the game. Voices spoke to me of lies and hidden truths – an entity tried desperately to convince me that this life I had returned to was not real, that Elizabeth and Coraline were not really there in my room with me. When I sought out this entity in my dreams I found myself, and standing behind me was the figure the Prime Machine had conjured out of my head to represent Sherlock Holmes.

I awoke, covered in beads of sweat, with the cage in the sky filling my view.

That morning, several medical doctors looked me over and eventually agreed to allow me out into the lush garden on the grounds of the medical unit I was staying in. Elizabeth took time to rest and recover, having been sleepless by my bedside since I was pulled back to reality.

Coraline and I sat in the garden watching the butterflies flit carelessly from flower to flower. I listened contentedly as she recounted all the things she had done over the period of my absence.

I ate real food, devouring cheeses and breads and meats with passion. Coraline entertained me with her tumbling skills and a thousand pictures she had drawn of myself, Elizabeth, and a little girl grinning ear to ear. "That's me Daddy!" she would explain. "I'm happy you're home."

In one picture she had drawn a man with a bowtie, standing next to a large blue box.

"Who is this man, Coraline?" I asked.

"That's the Doctor, Daddy," she said matter-of-factly, as if I should have known better. "And that's his shapeship."

"Spaceship, you mean, sweetie," I corrected.

"Nope, its a shapeship," she insisted.

The morning flew by too fast for my liking and eventually Chief Galen came out to bring us back to my room. I could tell he had spent many sleepless nights since my ordeal began in earnest, as well. Quickly, his position as close friend to myself and my family came flooding back to me. I remembered the many hours he and I spent discussing integration with the Huulanix supercomputer when the strange gaming race had come to Dreides VII to challenge me. With Chief's help, we had built or advised the construction of a hundred or so gaming units across the human-controlled sectors of the galaxy.

"It's a shame it fell to such bad things," he said to me as we walked back to the medical building. "It had such potential."

I listened, watching Coraline skip happily to the door ahead of us.

"Well, no real harm done, right?" I said, smiling at my daughter's antics.

"You mean you don't know?" Chief said suddenly, grabbing my arm and stopping me.

"Know what?" I asked, growing wary.

"The game is still going," he said. "No one knows why. There's still people dying in there."

His last sentence stayed with me.

"The Doctor thinks he can get them out by going to the Prime Machine and interfacing directly with it."

"What do you mean there's still people dying?" I queried. "I'm not in the game. It's over. No one else was in the game."

Absent-mindedly, I watched Coraline skipping across the grass in front of the door leading back to my hospital bed. I knew exactly what Chief meant. The scene seemed to slow down before me. My daughter's skipping grew slower and slower as the truth washed over me and chilled my spine.

Chief was silent, but I said what he was afraid to admit.

"Those people really died, like I would have. It's my fault. And there's still people trapped there," I surmised. "My God, it's my fault they died."

Chief looked unsure of what to do. He put a hand of my shoulder and I brushed it away. Silently, I gathered up Coraline in my arms and went back to my room, leaving Chief to stand stupidly in the garden alone.

I did not speak to anyone the rest of that evening and feigned sleep until the day's light gave way to darkness. Stealthily, I exited my room and cut across the hallway to an open door. Listening for sounds of the presence of others, I waited in the darkness. Down the hall I could hear a few nurses speaking to each other in hushed tones. In the direction of the voices, brighter light cast shadows of human movement on the wall. Slipping quietly away, I went in the opposite direction.

At the time, I did not know exactly what I was looking for, but I soon came upon the Doctor's blue box tucked away in a shadowy corner of a large room used for storing large medical machinery, monitors, laser-surgical devices, and scanners. I tried the doors to the strange blue box, but they were locked.

As I stood there, Chief and the Doctor entered speaking heatedly. I quickly ducked around the backside of the Doctor's box and listened to their conversation.

"I told you he wasn't to know those people were still in there, Chief," the Doctor said in frustration.

"I thought you told me that so you could tell him yourself, Doctor!" Chief exclaimed. "He's got a right to know. Maybe he can help."

"He's helped enough," the Doctor snapped. "He's just one man. He's been through a terrible ordeal. The last thing he needed was to be told that he may have inadvertently killed people without knowing it. I mean, how would you feel, Chief?"

"I would want to know."

"No, you wouldn't," the Doctor said quietly. "I speak from experience. You wouldn't want to wake up to the screams of people you never knew, people you couldn't save. I know."

"What can we do now?" Chief asked. "He knows. He'll want to help you."

"He can't. He has a wife and child that very much need him at the moment," the Doctor said, opening the door to his box. "Just be there for him. That should be punishment enough for you, seeing it in his eyes as he dwells on the lives lost."

"I'm sorry," Chief said.

"You should be," the Doctor said, slamming the door behind him. I heard Chief's heavy footsteps leaving the room and after a few moments of silence, I slipped around to the front of the box and tried the door. It opened.

I stepped through the threshold and found myself in an expansive room, impossibly larger than the blue box I had entered. In its center a large complicated looking console reached up to the ceiling, strange noises came from all around me.

"You don't looked shocked," a voice said behind me.

I casually turned to face the Doctor.

"I get slightly miffed when people don't say things like 'It's bigger on the inside' or various other obvious exclamations of wonder and awe. No, not you though. It figures. Oh well."

He strode past me to his console, patting my shoulder on the way.

"You can't come with me, Jeffrey," came his frank declaration.

I did not answer his refusal right away.

"Coraline calls this your shapeship," I said. "She's not far off, I think. You're a shapeshifter, Doctor. I'm sure, given the obvious technological advances you may have at your disposal, you fashion yourself as some sort of savior of time and space, but you're just a meddler – changing faces for each fool you goad into helping you."

The Doctor stopped what he was doing and stood with his back to me.

"You've been where I am. You know what it feels like," I spoke carefully, hoping my words would change his mind. "To not be able to save everyone – to feel a responsibility to right wrongs that you yourself may have caused. But you hide behind that mask of yours, the one that says you've seen and done everything and can save anyone."

"Don't speak to me as if you know me, Jeffrey. My mind is much bigger on the inside than yours. I can hold and have held an entire species' death rattle in my head. I have been where you are, a thousandfold, a thousand times. I've felt the responsibility of an entire universe – knowing every step that I take, every second I breathe air into these lungs I could be bringing about the destruction of everything ever."

"This is my fight, Doctor!" I yelled, losing control. "Every day of my life I will have to look into the eyes of my daughter and know that somewhere out there they may be another little girl whose father didn't come out of the game alive!"

His head sagged a bit, and he drew in a long, tedious breath.

"How many more are there?" I demanded. "How many more people are trapped in that computer's insanity?"

The Doctor mumbled something.

"What was that?" I barked at him.

"Thousands," he said, quietly staring at his console.

"Why didn't the game stop?" I asked. "I thought you said that if I was gone, this would end."

"It was logical. You were the computer's opponent," he rationalized. "No opponent, no game."

Again, something in the back of my mind screamed at me to see the clue I had yet to open my eyes to. Giving up hope, and ignoring the nagging doubt in my head, I turned to leave the strange ship and return to my room.

"Jeffrey," the Doctor said, turning to face me. "I can take this. These thousands might still die, but it will be my fault if they do. Let me take that from you. Let this be my burden."

"This will forever be my burden, Doctor. There's nothing more you can take from me."

With that last statement, I left his ship and stood alone in the storage room. Behind me, a horrible, grinding noise grew in volume and I turned to see the Doctor's blue box vanish into thin air.

At that moment, as the grinding sound faded into nothingness, I knew what I would do. I pocketed a hypogun and headed for the building which housed the interface to the game. I struggled painfully with the notion of saying goodbye to my wife and daughter, but I could not bear the thought of seeing either of them realize it would be the last time they would see me.

I strode purposefully across the garden and found the man I was looking for, staring skyward at the stars through the environmental shield above us. Chief Galen looked beside himself, not noticing my approach. Silently, I walked up behind him, hypogun in hand, and pressed the barrel of it against his back.

"Don't make this difficult," I said to his back, pressing the hypogun forcefully against him. "I just need you to help me get back in the game."

"Jeffrey, don't do this," he pleaded. "Let the Doctor handle this. He can do this without us."

"I don't care if he can change history to his whims. I'm doing this, and you will help me."

Chief nodded his intention to yield to my desires and I guided him toward the Entertainment building.

"You're going to miss the arena opening tomorrow. We have three teams coming in from the outer orbits. Should be a good match or two."

"Don't bother, Chief. I'm not interested in mundane activities. I have to do this."

Together we marched across the expansive garden and Chief used his security clearance to enter the building. A sign had been posted on the door indicating the Entertainment building would be shut down until further notice.

"We were able to get all the Dreides residents out of the game while the Doctor was in the game with you," Chief offered.

"Be quiet, Chief. Just get me in the game."

We walked down a long hallway, our footsteps echoing throughout the complex, which had been devoid of people since my extrication from the game.

Using his security card a second time, he lead me into a giant spherical room. An apparatus, similar to a dentist's chair with wires and hoses leading to and from it, occupied the center of the room. Large metallic spheres set into the walls were spaced at intervals all around the room.

"It will take some time to reboot the system and establish a connection," Chief explained, looking over his shoulder. "It would be a lot easier if you'd take that empty hypogun out of my back."

Sheepishly, I allowed my arm to drop. I expected Chief to detain me and drag me back to my room, perhaps strapping me to my bed. Instead, he continued the process of rebooting the system.

"I'd have helped you if you'd have just asked, you know," he said. "You weren't alone in what happened. You and I were in this together from the beginning. It's as much your fault as mine."

"That's not true, Chief," I said, attempting to reason with him, but feeling better for not having to go through this final battle alone.

"It is," he said with hesitation. "You couldn't have done any of this without me."

I sighed and patted his shoulder. "Thank you, Chief."

Before I could react, he spun his large frame around and embraced me in a rough hug. "We'll make things right, Jeffrey."

I attempted a smile and he eventually released me. I walked over to the chair I would most likely die in and feelings of intense fear and dread washed over me. In contrast to those feelings, I heard a voice in my head, like a siren's song, calling me back to that devious reality – the hell the Prime Machine had created to best me.

"Don't lose me in there," I instructed. "I think I may know a way to divert the Prime Machine's attention away from interacting with the other people in the game, but you've got to be monitoring me at all times. Can you hack the other signals and shut the others off?"

"I can try. We'll get as many out as we can."

"No matter what happens, do not pull me out. Do you understand?"

"Jeffrey, if you get in trouble, I'll -"

"You'll do nothing. I have to try, and if it kills me, so be it. Then the Doctor will be our last hope."

"Do you trust him?" Chief asked, not sounding too sure.

"I do."

Chief made the final connections to my physical body as i tried to settle into the oversized cushions of the interface.

"Five minutes, Jeffrey. Good luck."

"Goodbye, Chief."

The five minutes passed in silence and then Chief activated the connections.

Darkness flooded my vision and for several minutes I could not draw breath. I felt myself falling through a void in space, then speeding my descent until I felt my body being ripped apart into a billion smaller pieces. A light grew in the distance and I flew still faster towards it until slowly it began to fill my perspective. I experienced the sensation of being assembled particle by particle and the scene before me slowly cleared into focus.

I was tied tightly to a lounge chair in Holmes apartment. Before me roared a fire in the fireplace and wisps of smoke wafted gently over my head from some source behind me.

"Ah Watson," a voice said. "I trust your respite into unconsciousness has not left you without your senses. It's good to have you back with us."

I struggled in vain against the bindings and attempted to speak, but quickly realized I had been gagged as well.

Sherlock Holmes' gaunt form walked leisurely around the chair to stand in front of the fire. He puffed pensively on a wooden pipe and regarded me with a smirk.

"Don't fret about the bindings too much, dear Watson," he said. "You've been a frightful state since the debacle at the opium den. I had no idea you would have such a reaction to the fumes in the place. You should count yourself quite fortunate that I was able to pull you from that place before you went into shock."

I grunted and tried to speak around the gag, but could only managed to growl incomprehensible gibberish at him.

"Oh yes, sorry about the gag as well," he said waving his hand absently at me as he tamped down the tobacco in his pipe. "Best for you to breathe through your nose until the narcotics have fully exited your system. You really gave us quite a scare."

I realized then that I was having trouble conjuring up images from Dreides VII. I tried to remember how I had come to this place, and could not reconcile the images into any sort of substantial memory. It was if my mind was being erased with each image I attempted to conjure up. I quickly stopped, fearing that further thoughts would erase my reality completely from my mind.

"Now, Watson. Let's discuss our next course of action. We had to abandon the cow business after your accident, and good timing has rewarded us with quite the intriguing replacement. All we need is some suitable bait," he said, gesturing towards me. "and the perfect place to draw my nemesis to his final ultimate demise. Do you know know who I speak of, dear Watson?"

I spoke against the gag and nearly choked. Smiling, Sherlock carefully removed the gag from my mouth, being careful not to get his fingers near enough for me to bite him.

"You mean Professor Moriarty," I said, knowing who the ultimate nemesis for Sherlock Holmes would be.

"No, you fool," Sherlock said, removing a blackjack from his coat pocket. "I mean the Doctor."

With force, Holmes bludgeoned me and once again I found myself descending into deep darkness.


	9. 9 Nemesis

9. Nemesis

I groggily clawed my way back to consciousness as I felt my body being jostled roughly. It took several moments to orient myself with the environment, but soon I deduced the truth of my predicament. I was still bound by the wrists and ankles but my gag had slipped away from my mouth. I found myself tightly bound to the side of a hansom with little ability to move. Next to me sat Sherlock Holmes, whipping the frothing horses that pulled our carriage.

I did not recognize the countryside surrounding us, but it reminded me of Switzerland, if not some bizarre mock-up of it. A cold wind bit my face and tears cut cold paths from my eyes as we moved at unsafe speeds down a dirt road.

"How do you know about the Doctor?" I asked aloud.

"It's my business to know the facts, Watson," he said evenly. "Do you really think that all this time I didn't know exactly what was going on?"

"You're not Sherlock Holmes," I challenged. "None of this is real."

Holmes jerked his head to regard me momentarily with a look that might have been surprise, but the glance soon faded into a sneer. "You're out of your depth here. Don't be so sure you know the truth."

"I suppose you expect me to believe your little charade about this all being the result of breathing fumes at the opium den?" I snapped. "Ridiculous. This is a game – a game being controlled by a computer."

"Now it's you who are being ridiculous, Watson," he replied.

"You, yourself, admitted that you know who the Doctor is," I cried in retort. "You do not exist. You are a construct of a very complicated game being played out by -"

With a speed unlike anything human, Sherlock Holmes reached a hand over and grabbed my forehead. Before I could pull away I experienced a sharp blinding pain that echoed down into my spine. The scene slowed and I felt myself being blurred and stretched in time and space until all light was pulled into a pinpoint set within a deep and foreboding void of darkness.

My mind flashed through the events of the last several months, time I had spent in the game, trapped by the Prime Machine. A whirlwind of visions assaulted me and I witnessed past occurrences being replayed in my head. With each vision, a new altered one replaced it. Holmes was erasing my memories – rewriting my personal history as I watched.

"You didn't really think you were the smartest being in this universe, did you?" his voice echoed in my head. "Haven't you ever asked yourself why you play the part of the sidekick, and not the master?"

In fact, I had pondered that point many times since I had learned the Doctor's version of the truth. It was that nagging doubt in the back of my mind, that question never asked aloud that faded as quickly as it came to the surface – the one piece of the puzzle that all others suggested existed by the void it left, but was never found to fill it.

"This goes beyond tests of intelligence and games of wit."

I saw Coraline and my wife, Chief Galen and the people of Dreides VII, my whole life vaporized and replaced by a story I knew so well that I had created an entire miniature universe from my visions of it alone.

"I am the one chosen to beat this game. You are merely a pawn in a greater struggle."

I struggled to breathe. His hand felt like hot coals against my skin and I could not move away from that searing pain. I tried desperately to hang on to some memory of my life I had just rediscovered and my eyes flashed to my forearm, covered by the sleeve of my overcoat. I knew there was a truth there, something to hang on to, but I could not move my hand to pull back the curtain covering what was hidden there.

"They chose poorly. Even the great Prime Machine doesn't realize it is being used."

Slowly the trees at the sides of the dirt road were coming into focus and I could make out the forms of the horses pulling us in our carriage.

"Listen, Watson, as I tell you this before I erase it forever from your mind. My race was destroyed long ago, erased from history forever. We were the pinnacle of sentience in the universe and our master race was the supreme force of change sweeping across the galaxies as we wiped out all those lesser than us. This man, The Doctor, fought us, tricked us, and destroyed us, binding our fate forever to the void. Some of us escaped to return here, but always this one figure stood in their way, preventing our return to supremacy."

As he spoke, he transferred some of his thoughts to me in visions. I saw a humanoid race, proud and vicious, mutated and changed into a superior form – a perfect machine. I saw a man battling their evil through time, always wearing a different face, but obviously the Doctor.

"The race of beings that created the Prime Machine created a universe from scratch, and in doing so unwittingly wrote the laws of that alternate universe to allow for gaps – holes in the fabric of space and time. It sought out the greatest minds to test, and, without knowing it, pulled me from the void. I am a god in this universe, and soon, using the ramshackle physics that allow this alternate universe to exist, I will pass into your universe, where I will retain my powers. Even now, your Doctor struggles against me, thinking he faces off against a powerful artificial intelligence, but soon he will come here and he will learn the truth. And then he will be destroyed once and for all. I am the last hope for my kind."

The visions faded as I slowly came back to full consciousness. Holmes's words slipped into my mind and then faded away as they were spoken.

"We will survive!"

With extreme mental struggle, I managed to whisper a question before my last true memory faded away forever.

"Who are you?" I gasped.

"As far as you will ever know," he said with an evil laugh, "I am Sherlock Holmes."

As he pulled his hand away, the sounds and vibrations of the carriage came rushing back to the surface of my senses.

Once again, I was Watson.

"Goodness, Holmes," I said, shaking my head to clear it. "Why am I tied up? And how did we get to Switzerland so quickly?"

"Feeling better, Watson?" he said with a smile. "Let me help you."

With one hand still holding the reins, he untied my bindings and tossed the ropes to the road.

"You were slipping in and out of consciousness throughout the trip here and I've taken excessive measures to ensure your safety on our long journey, but we could not delay this part of it any further, so I tied you firmly to the side of the carriage to prevent injury," he explained.

"A bit tight on the knots, I'd say," I remarked, rubbing my wrists vigorously. For a moment I felt the sudden urge to pull back my sleeve. I did so, but was unaware of what I expected to see there. I saw only pale skin, reddened at the wrist where the ropes had rubbed the flesh.

I quickly ran my hands over various parts of my body, feeling inexplicably sore in several places. My hands fell upon the gag hanging loosely around my neck.

"A gag?" I queried.

"You were feverish. The cloth served to soak up some of the sweat," was Holmes's reply. His eyes were distant, but focused on the road ahead of us.

"Here let me take over the reins," I offered. With a queer smirk, Holmes surrendered control to me. Using my familiarity with horses, I was able to coax more speed out of them and we tore through the countryside at incredible speed.

"Keep following this road until it forks. Take a left and follow the river for a distance until you see a large barn in disrepair. The rest of our journey will start there on foot." Holmes removed his pipe from an inside pocket and tamped the tobacco before lighting it. Puffs of smoke swirled around underneath the canvas top covering us before being caught in the rush of air from our movement.

"That damned Moriarty," I spat. "He'll pay for his crimes."

"Indeed."

"What a brilliant plan to lure him to the location of your last meeting with him. Reichenbach Falls. If only his tumble into the falls had killed him the first time, both Tristan and Mycroft would still be alive," I remarked with a sigh.

"This is the end game, Watson," he stated. "I will need your complete devotion to the task at hand. You are the bait. Our subtle communications through his network of thugs and lackeys will bring him out of hiding, but rest assured he knows what this is leading to. Once he arrives, leave him to me."

"As always, old friend, you can count on me."

The rest of our trip by carriage was colored in silence and scenery. After the fork in the road, the elevation gradually began to grow. Our horses showed signs of tiring and the last few miles to the abandoned barn were at a noticeably slower pace.

Once we arrived at our last destination by carriage, Holmes and I both quickly exited the carriage, not bothering to secure our transportation. The horses were unhitched and allowed to forage and drink from the running river nearby. They would not stray far in their state.

"Up for a bit of a hike, Watson?" Holmes asked, proceeding towards the foot trail that would lead us to the falls.

"Lead on," I replied.

The path gradually climbed upwards for a few more miles, and it was close to sunset by the time we were close enough to see the falls in the distance. I found myself full of energy, even after my trials since the incident at the opium den. As I walked I tried to remember exactly what happened, but the details were shrouded, as if seen through silk. I remembered the meeting with Tristan, Holmes' bizarre doppelganger, but no events after that point. Even the details of our trip by train were cloudy in my mind.

"I will wait here in cover," Holmes said as we reached a dense growth of bushes and trees. "You go on to the end of the trail and soon Moriarty should find you there. I will then come up behind and surprise him."

I nodded my understanding and left Sherlock to hide in the brush.

Again, I felt the urge to look at my forearm, and this time I distinctly felt I should see something written there, but again I saw only bare flesh under the sleeve.

Approaching the falls, I wondered if Moriarty was watching me ascend. Mist from the roaring water washed over me in curtains sporadically. Feeling the chill, I shoved my hands in my pockets and in the right one I discovered a pistol. This struck me as unusual, as the entire hike I should have felt the weight of the gun there, but did not. It was if it had suddenly appeared there as soon as my thoughts drifted towards the possibility of it being there.

My confusion quickly dissipated as I reached a narrow ledge, barely wide enough for a cart to traverse, that led to the spot where Holmes and Moriarty had grappled with each other those many years ago.

I had not been present for that climactic battle, but had heard its telling in detail by Holmes himself many times.

At the end of the trail, I chanced a look over the ledge to the bottom of the falls. How a man could have survived the fall was beyond me. The rocky walls were slick and seemingly devoid of any handholds or place to make as ascent. Moriarty must have survived by a miracle to have fallen that distance and not been broken against the rocks at the fall's base.

Turning around and steeling myself for possible combat, I prepared to meet my friend's arch nemesis. His method of arrival, however, completely caught me off guard.

From out of the roar of the falls I heard an all-together different sound – a groaning of machinery that seemed somewhat familiar, but at the same time completely alien. I glanced around for a mill or man-made structure that might house machinery that would make such a racket, but as the sound grew louder I determined its source.

A strange blue box, with English text labeling it as a Police Box, suddenly shimmered into view out of thin air. My pulse began to race at such an unusual site. I clamored for some rational explanation, as my friend had often instructed during moments of seemingly irrational occurrences. No rational deduction of the clues at hand came close to making sense of what I saw.

With a final thump, the strange box appeared fully and its door opened. Immediately, and mostly by instinct, I removed my pistol from its pocket and leveled at the door and whatever might come from within.

Professor Moriarty stepped out and immediately jumped in surprise.

"Jeffrey!" he said. "What are you doing here? I told you to stay on Dreides VII!"

He seemed very cross at seeing me there, which was contrary to what I had been led to believe would happen. His mention of the name Jeffrey and Dreides meant nothing to me.

"Stay where you are, Moriarty," I snapped. "I will fire upon you if I must, but your life is not mine to take at this time."

Moriarty sighed, placing his hand to his brow, and said to himself, "Not this again."

Exasperatedly, he ran his hands through his floppy hair. "Jeffrey -"

"My name is Dr. John Watson."

"Your name is Jeffrey, and you've made a very silly, very human error in coming here," he replied.

"You're the one who has made the error, fiend," I stated confidently. "You escaped death here once before, but not this time. One way or another, Professor, your end comes here and it comes soon." I glanced down the trail and did not see Holmes approaching. I wondered what was taking him so long.

"Look," Moriarty said calmly. "Let's just put away the gun and talk for a moment. Surely, I've got no where to run. For you to be that confident in my demise, you must have some cunning trap laid for me. It won't hurt to point that thing somewhere else before you hurt one of us."

I thought briefly about the situation for a moment, and decided he was right. He had no where to run – except back into his box.

"Step over to the edge," I directed. "Away from the box."

"Fine. Fine." Acquiescing to my demands, he carefully moved toward the ledge and looked over. "I've seen bigger."

I moved between him and his box to cut off any escape, and then lowered the gun.

"So," he said casually. "Where is old Sherlock, by the way? Sent you off again to do the hard work while he puffs away on his pipe like some pompous prat?"

"He's a better man than you, Moriarty."

"Yes, well, it remains to be seen if he even is a man."

Incensed, I raised the gun at him again.

"Alright," he said quickly, raising his hands. "What have they done to you, Jeffrey?"

His face fell into a look of concern. "I told you to stay out of this. Your wife and child need you."

"My wife is dead, and I have no children," I snapped. "Now shut up, or I will take your life whether Holmes arrives or not."

"You don't remember?" he said, lowering his hands slowly. "You don't remember Coraline?"

His words meant nothing to me. Purposefully, I cocked the pistol.

Before I could fire, there was a loud explosion above us. Huge pieces of the cliff wall broke loose with sickening slowness. With an overwhelming feeling of dread I realized I had been tricked by my only friend. He had sacrificed me for his own sick game against his adversary.

As rocks began to rain down upon us, Moriarty sprinted towards me. I didn't bother to lift the gun. At that moment, seeing an enormous sheet of rock teeter over my head, I resigned myself to my fate – death at the hands of a man I trusted completely.

Moriarty hit me hard and propelled me backwards into his unusual box. As large rocks hit us, the door opened and we fell in a heap inside. He quickly shut the door and I noticed immediately that we seemed to have been transported somewhere else. My first thoughts were that I had died, but soon I realized I had been here before.

"It's bigger on the inside," I said, a trickle of blood running into my eye.

"That's more like it," Moriarty said. He pulled a handkerchief from one of his pockets and dabbed a wound on my temple. "Not so bad, not so bad. You'll survive."

"TARDIS," I said, the word sounded familiar and fitting, and with the spoken word images flooded my thoughts.

"Yes, Jeffrey," he said, smiling as he stood. "You're getting now."

As quickly as the memories had been erased by the being pretending to be Sherlock Holmes, they came rushing back in full clarity.

"Doctor," I said, recognizing my savior for the first time. "There's something you must know. Holmes is not part of the game, he's a competitor in the game."

"Yes," he confirmed. "My little trip to see the Huulanix yielded some unexpected surprises. That realization was just one of them. Did he tell you who he was?"

I shook my head, struggling to stand, then decided to remain on the floor. "Not directly, just that you had faced his kind before and destroyed his race."

"Well, that could be anybody," he said, slightly smirking. "Everyone's always saying I've wiped them out, or knocked them down, or beaten them up, but they always come back. Especially, the really evil ones."

The Doctor strode over to a large console rising to the ceiling in the center of the room. Half of it looked extremely complex, the rest looked remarkably like random junk tossed together. Pulling a suspended screen towards him, he tapped it and seemed to be pleased with what he saw.

"We're a bit buried, but no worries. She took the rockfall like a champ, the sexy old gal."

Turning back to face me he asked, "Was there anything else he said?"

I nodded, "Something about the void. And how the miniature universe would give him the ability to cross over into our universe. He said he was his race's last hope, and that they would survive."

The Doctor looked suddenly weak and turned, bracing himself against the console.

"No," he said. "It couldn't be."

Watching him, I noticed that for the first time since I had known him, he looked genuinely scared.

"How did he say it?" he asked.

"I don't know. Angrily, as if he didn't like you very much at all."

"No, I mean the last part about surviving. What were his exact words?"

"He said, 'We will survive'," I said. The Doctor bent over and softly banged his head against the console.

"No, no, no. Not them, please. And if so, why them?" he moaned. "Anyone but one of them. An infinite number of races in the history of the multiverse and it would just have to be them."

"We should get away from here," I pleaded. "He … did something to me. Erased my memories. He said he was a god here and had powers."

"Oh, we're not going anywhere," the Doctor said, suddenly standing up straight. He made a few adjustments to dials on the console and pulled a lever. The room shook and the roaring sound I had heard earlier echoed through the room. "We're moving just a bit, but we're staying right here and waiting for our good friend to show himself. We have to stop this right now and right here."

Leaping from the console he trotted over to the doors and listened. The shaking and roaring stopped. The Doctor turned towards me, a serious look on his face. "I told you not to come, but I understand why you did. I'd have done the same thing, but what we're about to face is possibly beyond both our abilities. The thing is, you have powers here too. Remember the rottweiler?"

I nodded, once again resigning myself to a fate that might not end with survival.

"You may be our only hope here, Jeffrey. If it comes down to it, I may not be able to help at all. If he really does have powers here, you're the only one who can stand against him. My skills are useless in the face of that much power."

"I was always the only one who could fix this," I said to him.

Smiling slightly he walked over to me and patted my shoulder in encouragement. "Just remember, you've got a family waiting for you back home."

Smiling back, I raised my sleeve and showed my forearm to him. Written in ink, just like it had been during our visit to Mycroft, was the name of my daughter, Coraline.

"Right. Let's end this adventure, Jeffrey. And hope for a happy ending. I always like happy endings – not enough of them these days."

With a flourish he opened the door and stepped out on the ledge. The TARDIS had moved about twenty feet from its original position. Where it had stood, a huge pile of rocks stood – dust and pebbles still trickled down from the cliff walls above.

"Here I am, whoever you are!" the Doctor shouted. His voice echoed deeply through the area, only slightly dampened by the roar of the water over the falls.

"I knew you'd fail me, Watson," said a voice behind the TARDIS. Brazenly, Sherlock Holmes strode out from his hiding place, puffing on his pipe. "I'd hoped he'd have goaded you into killing him for me, but I suppose the hard work is really the master's work after all."

""Let's end this charade," the Doctor said confidently. "Who are you?"

"You mean you haven't figured it out yet?" Holmes said, then burst into laughter. "Some Time Lord you are."

I raised my pistol and aimed it at our adversary. "The Doctor asked you a question."

"And I will tell him when I chose," Holmes snapped. "Just before I extinguish his life and his remaining regenerations, once and for all."

Raising a hand, Holmes gestured towards the Doctor. A shimmering wave of energy erupted from his hand and encircled the Doctor's neck, raising him off the ground. The Doctor struggled, frantically grasping at the energy beam choking him.

I fired the pistol three times directly at the head and torso of Holmes, but the bullets never reached him. They stopped in mid-air and fell to the ground.

"Your weapons cannot kill me!" Holmes shouted triumphantly. "I am superior!"

Gesturing with his other hand, another energy beam snaked toward me and knocked the gun from my hands.

"This universe has given me powers beyond your conception. Once I vanquish you, I will receive the reward promised me by the Prime Machine – this universe to control!"

"You forget," I said cryptically. "We are competitors on equal ground here. You'll not find me so easily put down."

Suddenly, there was the sound of great amounts of air being inhaled. A noise like a balloon inflating caused Holmes to turn towards the new threat. His eyes fell upon the firebear I had conjured up from the depths of my mind. The fantastic creature expelled a concentrated fireball directly at Holmes. A look of pure fear crossed over his face before he vanished, along with the energy beam suspending the Doctor.

Running over to the Doctor's crumpled form, I motioned for the firebear under my control to stand near us, in case Holmes returned.

"Great idea, Jeffrey," the Doctor gasped. "Nearly had me there, he did."

"Are you alright?" I asked, glancing around for any sign of Holmes.

"I'm fine, just keep on your guard. It only gets rougher from here."

Just then, Holmes blinked back into existence beside the firebear. Before the creature could unleash another fiery blast, Holmes raised a finger at it and fired a concentrated beam of energy at it. For a moment, we could see the creature's skeleton glowing through transparent flesh before it crumpled in a heap, dead.

"I know that weapon," the Doctor said quietly.

Next, Holmes gestured towards me and I felt myself shifted from my position faster than I could think. The world went dark and I was paralyzed, unable to move or breathe. After several minutes, I realized I could project my mind outward from my position. Holmes had transported me into the solid rock wall. I was trapped.

Using my mind projection, yet completely unfamiliar with how to use it effectively, I saw the final struggle between the two adversaries through the rock.

Just as the story went, detailing the original fight between the detective and his nemesis, Holmes charged the Doctor, intending to throw him over the falls. The Doctor deftly maneuvered to brace himself and physically grappled with Holmes at the precipice. For several seconds, with both men seemingly about to topple over the edge, they wrestled for dominance.

"I'll kill you without use of my powers, Doctor," Holmes shouted, spraying spit as he desperately tried to gain the upper hand. "Then you shall know once and for all that we are supreme."

"Nice weapon you used against the firebear," the Doctor retorted. "I'm pretty sure I've seen it before. And it makes me wonder …"

With a brilliant shifting of his weight, the Doctor bent and propelled Holmes over his shoulder. Holmes landed on his feet but teetered on the edge, his arms flailing. Unfortunately, he regained his balance and stood defiantly, prepared to continue.

"I bet you're wearing a perception filter, aren't you?" the Doctor said. Brandishing his sonic screwdriver, he aimed it at Holmes and used the device. Holmes form shimmered and faded to reveal a metallic being with a dome top. Two implements extended from an area at its front, and strange spherical protrusions lined its lower plating.

"Dalek!" the Doctor shouted triumphantly.

With an altogether different voice, one metallic and grating as befitting its appearance, the Dalek responded, "Your discovery of my identity makes no difference! You will only know me as Death!"

One of the forward implements, obviously its weapon, pointed at the Doctor and fired. There was no way to escape it.

As the Doctor braced himself for his death, I concentrated on the scene. Closing my eyes, I imagined time stopping completely. The sound of the waterfall stopped and I found myself in complete silence. I willed myself forward out of the solid rock until I felt ground beneath my feet. Opening my eyes, I saw the scene frozen before me.

The waterfall was frozen, sheets of rushing water suspended in mid-air. A beam of energy was extended from the Dalek's weapon and reached halfway to the Doctor, who stood frozen waiting to die. Mentally, I moved the Doctor's position to the right enough for the beam to miss him. Seeing that I had done what I could and losing focus on holding the scene in time, I let go.

The beam exploded against empty rock wall. Before the Dalek could reorient itself and target his nemesis again, the Doctor rushed forward with a war cry and shoved the Dalek over the edge of the precipice. With an inhuman scream, the Dalek toppled over to its demise.

"Well done, Jeffrey," the Doctor said, panting. "Excellent show. You saved my life."

"We're even," I said flatly. "But what about this place and all the people still trapped here?"

"Yes, well," the Doctor hesitated. "About that."

"Yes?"

"I've got nothing."

"I've won the game," I exclaimed. "My prize is this universe as a sandbox, like the Dalek said."

"Yes, that is the prize," the Doctor agreed. "But you obviously didn't read the fine print. No cheating."

"I don't understand."

"You manipulated the game world. The game will keep going with all its participants until someone wins legitimately. We'll have to go back to the Huulanix and figure out a way to stop the game at its source."

"But thousands more could die here!" I yelled. "We have to destroy this place."

"We'll figure out something," the Doctor said placating me. "But for now, we need to leave. The Prime Machine won't like what we've done here and may send something unpleasant to make sure we get a real 'game over'"

"GAME OVER IS NOW!" came the cry of the Dalek. Using jets at its base it rose over the ledge and hovered with its weapon aimed at the Doctor. "DALEKS MUST SURVIVE!"

Concentrating again, I mentally bent the weapon to fire back at the Dalek. With a tremendous explosion, the Dalek's own weapon blew a hole in its casing. The Dalek fell to the ledge with a crash. Inside I could make out a disgusting creature set within the machine shell.

Both the Doctor and I walked over to the incapacitated creature and knelt down to observe its true form.

In a weaker, non-amplified voice the Dalek spoke, "Have … mercy …"

"Always the same with you Daleks," the Doctor remarked. "You show no mercy, yet you beg for it at your pitiful end."

"Daleks … must … survive."

"And always I show you the mercy that you'll never visit upon anyone."

"Daleks … must … sur-"

The Dalek froze and spoke no more. The Doctor's eyes widened and he turned to me wrathfully. "You had no right to do that!"

"And you did? Would you have let him suffer?"

"I would have let him breathe a final breath of this universe! You murdered him when he was defenseless!" the Doctor shouted.

"I merely froze him in time," I said. "There will be no more deaths here."

Looking quickly back to the Dalek's frozen form, the Doctor apologized, "I'm sorry. It's just …"

"I know how you feel," I replied.

"I think you do now," he said, rising to his feet. "Let's get out of here."

I stood up straight but did not move from my position.

"Come on, Jeffrey. We should go pay a visit to the Prime Machine."

"I'm not leaving," I stated.

Coming back to stand before me, the Doctor grabbed my shoulders. "You can't stay here. You have people that need you back on Dreides VII. What can you possibly do here now? The Prime Machine will use all its power to eject you from the game alive or dead."

"Not while I still have these powers, Doctor."

"Jeffrey," the Doctor said quietly. "What are you thinking?"

"Every universe has an end. I can control time and space in this universe," I said. "I can collapse it into nothing."

"Jeffrey don't," he pleaded. "Jeffrey please don't do this. There's another way."

"This is the only way."

"For the love of your family, Jeffrey, you can't do this!" he said, shaking me roughly.

"For the love of my family, I have to do this," I replied.

Concentrating my power, I transported the Doctor into the TARDIS. For a brief moment, my energies mingled with that of the TARDIS and I felt it say to me, "This is the right thing to do. I shall keep him safe."

Projecting my voice and awareness, I asked the Doctor a final question. "What will happen to my body back on Dreides VII?

The Doctor slumped against his console, and banged a fist against what looked like a puzzle cube set into its face. "I don't know. Maybe you die, maybe you turn into a vegetable, maybe you go 'poof!'. I don't know. Jeffrey, I beg of you one last time, think of Coraline."

"And I tell you one last time, Doctor: I am."

The TARDIS began to fade as the roaring sound of its passing grew in intensity.

"Thank you, Doctor. Farewell."

As soon as the blue box disappeared, I imagined the entire universe drawing into my head. I could see outside my body as a brilliant white point of light erupted from the center of my forehead and suddenly drew inwards.

"It's bigger on the inside," I said as rocks began to roll towards me.

The Dalek, now unfrozen, said in its weak voice, "We all are."

Reichenbach Falls shifted its downward course and the entire waterflow was sucked into my mind. The force grew and the cliffside buckled under me. I reached out and cradled the broken Dalek's fragile form and pulled it into me. With loud cracks, the rock shelf around me broke and I floated in mid-air as I swallowed it whole into the supermassive void I was creating in my mind. I would take it all.

The clouds erupted in brilliant lightning. The moon stopped its slow pace across the sky and started to grow in apparent size. I reached a point that I knew I could not turn back from, and one last time I thought of Coraline.

The Earth exploded into flames and the seas boiled in protest, and still I pulled it in. The sky became impossibly bright as every star I could imagine came hurtling towards me. I heard a noise I soon realized was my own screams of anguish, and still I pulled on.

In a tremendous rush of light, matter, and energy, the universe collapsed into my mind and was no more.

I remember waking from that dream in a cold sweat. Apparently, I had been in a non-responsive state for several weeks before I finally came to. The events that had transpired in the dream were fresh on my mind, and I knowingly categorized the entire affair as a flashback to the episode I had in the opium den with my good friend, Sherlock Holmes.

This place they keep me in is bizarre. The leaps our human race has made in such a short time amazes me beyond comprehension. I still remember a time when I thought locomotives were the most advanced human construction I had ever seen, but now I stand corrected.

I'm an old man now, senile and incoherent. They take me for walks in a strange garden where I think I can see bars in the sky. Perhaps it is just the effects of the drugs they give me to counteract my quickly increasing dementia. How long I have been here, I cannot tell. Occasionally, I'll remember times when I had visitors, especially a young girl who I think I may have seen grow old before my eyes.

One day, the visitors stopped coming. For a long time, I think they've tried to tell me that my dreams were real, but I know that to be untrue. The ridiculous nature of the dreams can easily be refuted by logic – the one thing I retain from my time spent with my one true friend, Sherlock Holmes. I ignore what they say, realizing that its my own warped mind creating the false conversations about that ridiculous dream.

In my spare time, I chronicle my adventures with the great detective. At least those events are clear in my mind. Sometimes, its as if that time and place exists in permanence in my mind, easily extracted to detail.

Often throughout my life, and growing less so now that I reach a doddering old age of forgetfulness, I suddenly remember a case we had shared involvement in that I had forgotten for a great many years only to have every detail flood back with a connecting familiar scent, or locale. Such sudden remembrances have fueled my writing for years after I felt I had written all there was to be written about my friend.

That is what this tale has been – a forgotten adventure, my last adventure.

The incident in the opium den has never been explained to me. I feel that they don't truly know why I so violently reacted to the mix of fumes of smoked narcotics in that place. That incident ended my life as it was. Since then, I have remained here, alone.

Holmes is lost to me now, having apparently died many years ago. He never once came to see me here under my conjured cage in the sky, where phantom visitors pretend to be family I never had. I know he stayed away because he blamed himself for what happened. I do not blame him, though.

All along I've known the danger of being an assistant and close friend to Sherlock Holmes, and I wouldn't have changed the way my life turned out for the world – for the universe.

And so, here I sit, writing what I hope will be my last tale about my friend and my final adventure with him. I grow weary and know that I am not long for this world.

Just the other day I imagined a man came to see me. He had brown floppy hair and a ridiculous bow tie. With him, he had brought a young red-haired girl and a young, slightly gangly looking boy. I remember the imagined words he spoke to them very clearly.

"This is the man who saved my life."


	10. Epilogue: Bigger Game

Epilogue: Bigger Game

The homeworld of the Huulanix race was a desert planet called Hiilax. The natives of Hiilax were reflections of the harsh and arid world from which they sprang billions of years before they grew into the advanced space-faring race they were destined to become. Gigantic crags stabbed through seas of grey desert sand and formed far reaching, impassable mountain ranges across the landscape. Under grey-orange skies, the Huulanix race eked out a meager living for billions of years, barely surviving in the few oases found in valleys of the great ranges.

The menagerie of dominant species of Hiilax were a study in predatory superiority and extreme adaptability. Visitors to Hiilax would wonder why no flora or fauna could be observed in the wild – until the were sudden attacked by a vicious Krathricx beast, which they had mistaken for a rock. The plant life was just as vicious. Juniklk trees resembled Earth's cacti, but grew extremely wide root systems that radiated out under the sands from the visible part of the plant. The Juniklk sensed vibrations of movement over their root systems and could shift those roots with such violence as to displace huge amounts of desert sand in an instant, trapping prey both by entangling it and burying it. Such root systems grew so vast, it sometimes happened that one could not see the the tree before they were already being sensed by its roots.

The Huulanix themselves took several million years to band together into sentient tribes. They evolved from a highly efficient carnivore that resembled Earth's ratel. Over millenia, these beasts grew armored plating over vital organs, developed astounding limb strength and agility, and built up nearly invincible immune systems and endurance. They were the pinnacle of evolution for thousands upon thousands of years.

During one era of Hiilax's planetary evolution, the world suffered a prolonged ice age, and many dominant species were wiped out. However, it was the fierce ancestors of the Huulanix that adapted to pack hunting, both for greater success against rarer prey and for cannibalism when necessary. Over the centuries, the pack mentality grew until the ice receded and the world grew arid once more. With the passing of the ice age, species that had died out were replaced by different, more suitably adapted ones. The ancestors of the Huulanix became extremely successful. Packs grew into tribes, tribes built villages, villages grew into cities, and the future of the Huulanix as the pinnacle species of the planet was set in stone.

As civilized beings, the Huulanix developed a penchant for games. Though the desert was ever-changing, the need of entertainment to break the monotony of the sand and rocks grew until it became the centerpiece of tradition for the race over their long development into an advanced civilization.

Thus, the Huulanix gamers came to be.

Oba Fortux was the most successful Huulanix gamer of the modern age. His Talyf Djani Gaming Expo was the largest construction ever completed on the planet's surface. Billions of beings from across the galaxy came through his Expo to partake in the most advanced – and expensive – games of entertainment ever devised. The pyramidal building rose above the desert as high as some of the lofty peaks of the dagger-like mountain ranges. The massive complex could be observed via telescope from three neighboring planets.

But now, Oba Fortux had a problem. A descendant of the great carnivorous race of the planet's long history, he had grown extensive armor plates, like chitin, over his shoulders, chest, and skull. This still left some weak points – chinks in the armor. Oba's biggest weak spot was his greed.

"How long until we can go live on the newest miniverse?" Oba asked his advisors.

The great Huulanix gamer lord stood staring out of the highest tower of the geosynchronous orbital platform he used as a corporate headquarters. He sneered at the continual flux of spaceships going to and from the massive Expo below him on the planet's surface. In his mind, he told himself it wasn't as many as it should be.

"We're having some issues getting the physical laws to stabilize. All our attempts have had flaws that cause the miniverse to collapse after only a few minutes," one of the advisors stated.

Oba's massive neck cracked as he twisted his head around to stare at his assembled Advisory Panel.

Quietly, he stalked over to the advisor that had spoke.

"Are you or are you not the greatest Physics expert in the galaxy?" Oba asked calmly.

The advisor cringed at the proximity of the gamer lord. "Y-yes, Oba. There is no one better."

"So would you say you have an intimate relationship with the physical laws of space?"

"Uh, y-yes, my lord," the advisor stammered.

Oba nodded exaggeratedly and grabbed the advisor by the front of his robes. Calmly and quietly he pulled the gaunt advisor to the window overlooking the planet below.

"In my experience, there is always a bigger fish," Oba grunted. "I think you should become more intimate with the physics of this system. What do you think?"

The advisor's eyes widened in horror. Before he could scream Oba threw him through the window, shattering it and opening the tower to the vacuum of space. The rest of the advisory panel dove for something to hang on to as air evacuated the gamer lord's office. Oba braced himself and moved only a few inches toward the shattered glass before the orbital platforms environmental controls slammed a blastshield down over the opening.

As the rest of advisors gasped for air, Oba walked over to his ornate desk and activated a communications channel with the transit authority. "Prepare me a shuttle to Master Control."

"Since the collapse of the the primary miniverse, we've been looking for ways to prevent participants from gaining the ability to affect certain universal laws," the Lead Technician explained to Oba. "However, we've noticed an alarming number of gaps in the laws that we cannot close. Even the Prime Machine cannot effect the changes required to close those gaps."

Oba's hands clenched in fury, his claws sliced gouges in his palm as his stood fuming. His analytical mind was calculating the loss of the new miniverse not being online yet. In his head, he could see money pouring out from the planet and into deep space.

"I thought the Prime Machine was infallible. In fact, I thought our entire system was absolutely infallible. And yet, you tell me that we can't even control the simplest physical settings?" Oba barked.

"My lord, it is not an issue with our systems, it is an issue with the technology given to us by the -"

"What a convenient excuse. Blame the salesmen," Oba sneered. "You and I both know we'll never see them again."

Oba sneered with disdain at the massive metallic sphere that held the miniature universe forming the centerpiece of his gaming empire. Months ago he had suffered incalculable losses as the prototype game was destroyed by one of the participants. In addition, governments from several systems had levied sanctions on the gaming planet for the deaths of players that had occurred while in the massive game. Among the most influential of the planets now advocating the termination of the Prime Machine was Dreides VII, the homeworld of the gamer who had collapsed the gaming miniverse.

A messenger entered into the control room as Oba pondered which technicians he would kill today for the delay.

"Lord Oba, you have visitors."

"I am not to be disturbed!" Oba shouted, playing with the idea of ripping the messengers head off and pummeling a technician with it.

"My Lord, they bear an Imperial Inspection Decree."

If Oba's mottled grey scales could pale, they would have. "Bring them in," Oba said, less viciously.

Instead of the usual Inspection Team he expected to see, only a young red-haired human female entered.

Oba's scaly eyebrow raised slightly.

"What is a human doing on a Huulanix Imperial Inspection Team?" Oba asked suspiciously.

"Yes, well," the girl stammered. "Foreign exchange program." Quickly, she flashed a sheet of paper in a small leather case at him. It definitely looked like an Imperial Inspection Decree, but Oba felt something was amiss.

"Leave us," Oba commanded to the technicians, who quickly obeyed and thanked their gaming gods for the reprieve.

Soon Oba and the girl were alone. "Did you come alone?" he said, moving to stand close to her.

"My associates are inspecting another area at the moment," she said nervously. "They'll be along shortly. In fact, any second now."

"I'm not usually fond of the human form, but you are an overly attractive example of your race. What is your name?" he said seductively, circling around her, admiring her fit body.

"Amy Pond," she stated flatly. "And you are?"

Moving back in front of her, he pressed very close and grinned, showing his razor sharp teeth, "I am Gamer Lord Oba Fortux, master of this Expo."

"Good," Amy said with a smile on her face. With a swift motion, she brought her knee up swiftly between Oba's legs. The Concussion Pad strapped to her knee activated at impact with the Huulanix gamer lord's reproductive organs. The massive body of Oba was lifted off the ground from the concussion burst and he flew back several yards.

The door to the control room opened and two human males entered. One with floppy hair, a suit, and a bow tie; the other, a gangly youth about the same age as Amy.

"Ah yes, the Huulanix least protected area, the family jewels," the man in the bow tie said. Moving to stand over the crumpled and moaning form of Oba.

"Greetings, Lord Oba, I'm the Doctor and this is my associate Rory," he said with a beaming smile. "I see you've met the amazing Amelia Pond." With a wink, he patted Amy on the shoulder and moved over to sit at the master controls connected to the Prime Machine.

"My goodness, that's a lovely bit of technology you have there," the Doctor stated, gesturing towards the metallic sphere holding the miniverse. "But, you see, I'm a bit confused. Last time I was here, one of your technicians told me that you only had one. Since I witnessed the other one collapse personally, thanks to another of my good friends, I'm a bit surprised to see another one in operation."

Oba continued to groan in agony.

"No, don't get up. I wouldn't want to have to sic Rory on you, he can be very cross, can't you Rory."

The male youth looked around nervously. "Uh, yeah, right." He sneered at the downed Oba and growled with something akin to menace.

"But not as cross as me, Oba," the Doctor said with an edge to his voice. "I can become very cross indeed – especially when people don't tell me the things I want to know."

With a flourish, the Doctor brandished his sonic screwdriver and aimed it at the console. A warbling squeal erupted from it as he activated it and the console erupted in a shower of sparks. Jumping up, he trotted over to the still moaning gamer lord.

"Now, who sold you this technology?" the Doctor asked.

Oba gasped for air but managed to bark out," No one! We developed it … ourselves."

"You remember how I said I could become very cross just then?" the Doctor said menacingly. "If I know about one chink in your armor, don't you think I might know a few more? Perhaps the one leading directly to your brain?" The Doctor aimed his sonic screwdriver at an unarmored portion of the Huulanix skull the diameter of a nickel. "I checked your scientific records, Oba. This technology is way beyond your race's abilities. Who sold it to you?"

"The TDI sold it to us!" the gamer lord shouted, and then he began to weep.

"TDI. TDI. Never heard of them. Who are they?" the Doctor demanded.

"Temporal Defense Initiative," Oba moaned. "They sold us two units and the Prime Machine."

"Did they now?" the Doctor mused. "I've never heard of them. They sound very official."

"They are not from this universe," Oba whined, curling further into a fetal position.

The Doctor stood up abruptly. "What do you mean 'not from this universe'?"

"They travel through the multiverse selling the technology to create miniature universes. It was very, very expensive."

The Doctor paced over to the console that was beginning to emit acrid clouds of smoke. His face was crumpled in thoughtful concern.

"Doctor, what's wrong?" Amy asked.

"They're seeding," the Doctor said, more to himself.

"Seeding? These spheres are alive?" Rory asked.

"No, no. Nothing like that," the Doctor said, waving away the question. "No, this is much more sinister. They're seeding gateways. I think I may have encountered them before – or at least a version of them."

"Can we stop them?" Amy asked.

"I don't know," the Doctor said. "For the longest time I've only had to deal with one, maybe two universes at a time. If this Temporal Defense Initiative is what I think it is, we're not talking multiversal travel, we're talking infiniversal travel. Universes inside universes inside multiverses inside mulitiverses – its all very complicated and all very, very dangerous."

"So then, again," Amy said, getting impatient, "big scary alien on the ground, cross, and possibly about to recover soon. What now?"

"Now, we destroy this sphere," the Doctor said with finality. Aiming the sonic screwdriver at the sphere and activating it. The sphere began to vibrate and emit bursts of energy and gas.

From the floor Oba gaped at the sight. "What have you done? You'll destroy the whole complex!"

Technicians burst through the door and froze in their tracks, realizing what was happening. "It's going to explode!"

"Implode actually," the Doctor corrected.

"Gods! What do we do?" they asked in varying unison.

"What do you think you do, you silly fools," the Doctor shouted. "Run for your lives!"

Oba leaped up with a surprising recovery and following the group of technicians as they followed the Doctor's advice.

Before he, Amy, and Rory transported themselves back to the TARDIS, the Doctor added:

"And the same goes for the Temporal Defense Initiative … "

[- This concludes the adventures of the Doctor and the Case of the Prime Machine. Be on the lookout for more of my Doctor Who fan fiction as the Doctor as his companions begin their search of the elusive TDI and its counterparts on my blog, .com -]


End file.
